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Biomass is a money pit that won’t solve California’s energy or wildfire problems

Utilities customers help pay for biomass because electric utilities buy its products to produce electricity, paying four times more. Is it worth it?

Guest Commentary written by Shaye Wolf Shaye Wolf is the climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. California’s most expensive electricity source is finally poised to lose a government handout that props up its high costs and harmful pollution. In an era of clean, cheap solar and wind energy, policymakers are rightly beginning to treat biomass energy like the boondoggle it is.  Biomass energy — electricity made by burning or gasifying trees — is an expensive, dirty relic that relies on industry misinformation and taxpayer money.  In a vote later this month, the California Public Utilities Commission is expected to end the BioMAT subsidy program, which requires electric utilities to buy biomass power at exorbitant costs — four times the average. Californians get hit with those extra costs in our power bills, along with pollution that harms our health and climate.  Utilities and environmental groups support ending this costly subsidy.  But the biomass industry is fighting back with misleading claims that its projects are made clean by “new” technology or that they’re needed for wildfire safety. Don’t be fooled. Burning trees to make electricity harms the climate. In fact, biomass power is more climate-polluting at the smokestack than coal. Biomass energy releases toxic air pollutants that endanger health, increasing the risk of premature death and illnesses like asthma. The facilities often are located in low-income communities and communities of color that have long fought to shut them down.   It is telling that the biomass industry is rebranding. It claims it will use “clean” methods to gasify trees instead of burning them. But gasification — which also involves heating organic material — releases large amounts of climate-harming air pollution.  State regulators in May denied a costly biomass gasification project that couldn’t show it would reduce emissions as promised.   The industry also promotes carbon capture and storage, claiming this technology will suck up carbon dioxide from biomass smokestacks and store it underground forever. But carbon capture and storage is a costly, decades-old technology with a long history of failure and serious health and safety risks. Finally, the industry claims biomass energy projects will help pay for forest thinning, which it says will protect communities during wildfires. That means cutting trees, often large trees, which threatens wildlife and destroys forests, which naturally store carbon and fight climate change. Thinning isn’t a good way to keep communities safe. Most of the community destruction is caused by wind-driven fires during extreme fire weather, made worse by climate change. The fastest-moving 3% of wind-driven fires is responsible for 88% of the damage to homes.  No amount of forest thinning can stop that. In fact, thinning makes cool, moist forests hotter, drier and more wind-prone, which can make fires burn faster and more intensely. Most of California’s destructive wildfires — like the Los Angeles area fires in January — have burned in shrublands and grasslands, not forests, making thinning irrelevant in those cases. A better way to prevent fires Instead, the best investment for protecting communities during wildfires is hardening homes, so they’re less likely to catch fire, and stopping new development in fire-prone areas. Yet the state has earmarked only 1% of its wildfire funding for home hardening. Most goes to thinning.  Where thinning occurs, it’s most cost-effective to scatter the wood in the forest to create wildlife habitat, retain vital nutrients, and enhance natural carbon storage. If wood must be removed, it can be turned into mulch and shavings. The worst choice is subsidizing biomass companies to make dirty energy. Any way you look at it, biomass energy is a polluting money pit that won’t solve our climate or wildfire safety problems. California already has the affordable solutions we need: Clean, cheap solar and wind energy and energy storage to power our state, and home hardening to protect communities from wildfire while growing local economies.  California’s leaders need to embrace these proven solutions and get us out of the expensive, dangerous biomass business.

Energy
Business
CO2

Interoception Is Our Sixth Sense, and It May Be Key to Mental Health

Disruptions in interoception may underlie anxiety, eating disorders, and other mental health ailments

By the time Maggie May, an Arkansas resident in her 30s, was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in 2024, she had been struggling for years with atypical anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder that leads to severe food restriction and profound disturbances in body image. (Her name has been changed for privacy.) She had already tried traditional interventions with a psychotherapist and a dietitian, but they had failed to improve her condition. So when May heard about a trial of a new and unconventional therapy, she jumped at the opportunity.The treatment was unusual in that alongside talk therapy, May underwent several sessions in a sensory-deprivation chamber: a dark, soundproof room where she floated in a shallow pool of water heated to match the temperature of her skin and saturated with Epsom salts to make her more buoyant. The goal was to blunt May’s external senses, enabling her to feel from within—focusing on the steady thudding of her heart, the gentle flow of air in and out of her lungs, and other internal bodily signals.The ability to connect with the body’s inner signals is called interoception. Some people are better at it than others, and one’s aptitude for it may change. Life events can also bolster or damage a person’s interoceptive skills. Sahib Khalsa, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues think a disrupted interoception system might be one of the driving forces behind anorexia nervosa. So they decided to repurpose a decades-old therapy called flotation-REST (for “reduced environmental stimulation therapy”) and launched a trial with it in 2018. They hypothesized that in people with anorexia and some other disorders, an underreliance on internal signals may lead to an overreliance on external ones, such as how one looks in the mirror, that ultimately causes distorted body image, one of the key factors underlying these conditions. “When they’re in the float environment, they experience internal signals more strongly,” Khalsa says. “And having that experience may then confer a different understanding of the brain-body relationship that they have.”On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Studies have implicated problems with this inner sense in a wide variety of conditions, including anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorder. Some researchers and clinicians now think that problems in interoception might contribute to many mental illnesses. Alongside this research, which itself is complicated by challenges in testing design and by a less than clear understanding of interoception, other groups are also developing therapies that aim to target this inner sense and boost psychological well-being.This work is circling in on a central message: the body and mind are inextricably intertwined. “We have always thought about [mental health conditions] as being in the brain or the mind,” says Camilla Nord, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. But clinicians have long noted that people with mental illness frequently report physical symptoms such as abnormalities in heartbeats, breathing and appetite, she adds.The idea that the body can influence the mind dates back centuries. In the 1800s two psychologists on opposite ends of the globe independently proposed a then novel idea: emotions are the result of bodily reactions to a specific event. Called the James-Lange theory after its founders, American psychologist William James and Danish doctor Carl Lange, this view ran counter to the long-dominant belief that emotions were the cause, not a consequence, of corresponding physiological changes.Although this notion has garnered critics, it inspired a slew of studies. The 1980s saw a surge of interest in the role of physiological signals in panic disorders. Researchers discovered that they could bring on panic attacks by asking people to inhale carbon dioxide–enriched air, which can increase breathing rates, or by injecting them with isoproterenol, a drug that increases heart rate.Breathing rate can affect how someone perceives the intensity and unpleasantness of pain.These findings led some psychologists to suggest that physical sensations were the primary trigger of panic attacks. In the early 1990s Anke Ehlers, a psychologist then at the University of Göttingen in Germany, and her team examined dozens of people with panic disorders and reported that these patients were better able to perceive their heartbeats than healthy individuals—and that this greater awareness was linked to more severe symptoms. On top of that, a small, preliminary study by Ehlers of 17 patients revealed that those who were more skilled at this task were more likely to relapse and start having panic attacks again. These observations hinted at a two-way dynamic: not only could physical sensations within the body cause psychological effects, but the ability to perceive and interpret those signals—in other words, one’s interoceptive ability—could have a profound influence on mental health.Over the years a growing body of evidence has indicated that interoception plays an important role in shaping both emotions and psychological health. A large chunk of this work has focused on the heart. With every heartbeat, blood rushes into the arteries and triggers sensors known as baroreceptors, which shoot off messages to the brain conveying information about how strongly and rapidly the heart is beating.In one pivotal 2014 study, Hugo Critchley, a neuropsychiatrist at Brighton and Sussex Medical School in England, and his team reported that this process can affect a person’s sensitivity to fear. By monitoring volunteers’ heartbeats while they viewed fearful or neutral faces, they found that people detected fearful faces more easily and judged them as more intense when their heart was pumping out blood than when it was relaxing and refilling. But participants with higher levels of anxiety often perceived fear even when their hearts relaxed.Researchers have also demonstrated that bodily signals such as breathing patterns and gut rhythms can influence emotional reactions. People are quicker to react to fearful faces while breathing in than while breathing out, and breathing rate can affect how someone perceives the intensity and unpleasantness of pain.In more recent work, some neuroscientists have turned their attention to the gastrointestinal system. In 2021 Nord and her colleagues discovered that people given a dose of an antinausea drug that affects gut rhythms—processes within the stomach that help digestion—were less likely to look away from pictures of feces than they normally would have been. These disgust-related visceral signals, Nord speculates, may be relevant to eating disorders. “It’s possible that some of these signals contribute to feeling aversion to signals of satiety, making satiety very uncomfortable, a feeling you don’t want to feel,” she says.But how, exactly, do disruptions in interoception come about? Many researchers suspect it may have to do with our brain’s predictions going awry. Interoception, like our other senses, feeds information to the brain, which some neuroscientists suggest is a prediction machine: it constantly uses our prior knowledge of the world to make inferences about incoming signals. In the case of interoception, the brain attempts to decode the cause of internal sensations. If its interpretations are incorrect, they may lead to negative psychological effects—for example, if a person erroneously assumes their heart rate is elevated, they may begin to feel anxious in the absence of a threat. And if a person has learned to associate pangs of hunger with disgust, they might severely restrict how much food they consume.Inner signals can be much more ambiguous than the external input from other senses such as sight and hearing. So the brain’s prior information about these internal signals becomes especially important, says André Schulz, a professor of psychology at the University of Luxembourg.To better understand and assess potential mismatches in subjective and objective measures of our bodily signals, researchers have developed a framework that captures the different dimensions in which interoceptive processing occurs. In 2015 Sarah Garfinkel, then a postdoctoral researcher in Critchley’s group at Brighton and Sussex, and her colleagues proposed a model to clearly differentiate three categories of interoceptive processing: interoceptive accuracy (how well someone performs, objectively, on relevant tasks such as heartbeat detection), interoceptive sensibility (a person’s subjective evaluation of their interoceptive abilities), and interoceptive awareness (how well that self-assessment matches their actual abilities).Along with their collaborators, Garfinkel, now at University College London, and Critchley have found that in autistic adults there is a link between anxiety and a poor ability to predict one’s interoceptive skill—in this case, one’s sensitivity to heartbeat. In a study of 40 people (20 of whom had autism), they and their colleagues discovered that individuals with autism performed worse on a heartbeat-detection task and were more likely to overestimate their interoceptive abilities than those without autism. This disconnect was more pronounced in people with higher levels of anxiety, suggesting that errors in the ability to predict bodily signals may contribute to feelings of anxiety, Critchley says.In recent years the list of psychiatric conditions linked to interoceptive dysfunctions has grown. Some, such as panic and anxiety disorders, are associated with heightened attention to one’s internal processes; others, such as borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia, may be tied to a blunting of one’s ability to connect with these signals. In a review of interoception research, published in 2021, Nord and her colleagues examined 33 studies that collectively involved more than 1,200 participants. They found that people with a range of psychiatric disorders, including anxiety disorders and schizophrenia, shared similar alterations in the insula, a key brain region linked with interoception during body-sensing-related tasks.Overall, though, studies show mixed results. “If you look across the literature, [however many] studies have found an association with, say, anxiety, [a roughly] equal amount will have not found a relationship or found it in the other direction,” says Jennifer Murphy, a psychologist at the University of Surrey in England.The varying results could stem from the challenges associated with studying interoception, which can be difficult to both manipulate and measure. Take cardiac interoception. In most early studies in this domain, participants counted their pulses, but this test may measure people’s estimate of their heart rate rather than how well they can feel their heartbeat. This flaw was perhaps most clearly demonstrated in a 1999 study in which people with pacemakers reported their heart rates while experimenters (with the participants’ consent) secretly tuned their pacemakers’ timing up or down. Participants’ self-reported heart rates didn’t follow the shifts in the actual pulses; their beliefs about how their heart rates should be changing had a much stronger influence.To address these limitations, scientists have been devising better study methods. Micah Allen, a neuroscientist at Aarhus University in Denmark, and his team have developed a heart-rate-discrimination task in which people are asked to report whether a series of tones is faster or slower than their current pulse, allowing researchers to quantify how sensitive an individual is to their heartbeats. Allen and his colleagues are now testing breath interoception in a similar way. Using a computer-controlled device, the researchers can make precise changes to the air resistance someone feels when they inhale through a tube. By doing so, they can quantify how well the person can detect changes in their breathing.Using these new techniques, Allen’s team has learned that an individual’s interoceptive chops don’t translate across all domains. In a recent preprint study of 241 people, they found that a person’s ability to perceive their heart rate wasn’t correlated to their performance in a breathing-resistance task.Researchers have also been combining these behavioral tests with measurements of brain activity. One example is the heartbeat-evoked potential, a spike in brain signaling that occurs each time the heart beats. Scientists have found that changes in these signals, which can be detected with noninvasive brain-imaging techniques such as electroencephalography, are linked to accuracy in heartbeat-detection tasks and to the ability to process emotions. Similar brain signals related to organs such as the gut and those of the respiratory system have been linked to the ability to perceive sensations within those organs.These studies indicate that interoception abilities don’t align across a person’s bodily functions, from breathing to heart rate to gut rhythms. It’s therefore difficult to know whether the conflicting findings about the role of interoception disruptions in mental disorders mean there is no meaningful relation to be found or whether the issue is that researchers have simply not been using the right task or studying the most relevant system or level of interoception, Murphy says. “It’s very unlikely that every condition will have the same bit of interoception disrupted.”Untangling how, exactly, interoception is disrupted in people with mental illness remains an active area of investigation. Some experts say answers may come from treatment trials investigating whether interventions that target disturbances in this inner sense might boost mental health. Many such studies are currently underway.“To understand what interoception is, we need to manipulate it,” Allen says. “And to understand its role as a biomarker, as something that is related to mental health, we also need to manipulate it.”Jane Green knows stressful situations can have immediate effects on her body. For Green, who has autism, reading a piece of bad news or dealing with a face-to-face confrontation may set off a chain reaction in her body: a rush of adrenaline followed by a pounding heart, bloating and itchiness, among other physical reactions.Such responses may be linked to an inability to read one’s inner body. In 2019 she took part in a clinical trial in which Critchley, Garfinkel and their colleagues sought to test just that—how resolving a discrepancy between a person’s perceived interoceptive abilities and reality could improve anxiety levels in adults with autism spectrum disorder. The intervention in the study focused on tasks that involved heartbeat detection.After training and testing 121 participants (half of whom were randomly assigned to receive a noninteroception-based control task) across six sessions, the team reported in a 2021 paper that this treatment successfully reduced anxiety in their participants and that this effect persisted for at least three months.Participating in the trial was a “real turning point” in Green’s ability to deal with anxiety, she says. “I recognize now that when I’m stressed, whether I like it or not, my body reacts,” she explains. Although she still experiences physical reactions to emotionally charged situations, they are often less severe than they were prior to the treatment. And her knowledge of what’s happening in her body has made it easier to cope, she adds. Green is chair and founder of SEDSConnective, a charity dedicated to neurodivergent people with connective tissue disorders such as Ehlers-Danlos syndromes. These conditions tend to overlap with anxiety disorders, and Green is now advocating for interoception-based therapies to help affected people.A person’s interoceptive capabilities might be especially malleable during early childhood or adolescence.For May, who participated in the flotation-REST trial, what she learned from being cut off from the external world helped her to get through an inpatient stay at an eating-disorder clinic where she was being forced to eat—and, as a result, gain weight. “You’re working on the things that drove you to come in the first place, but at the same time, your distress with your body is getting worse and worse,” she says. When she was in the flotation chamber, however, May’s awareness of her physical body would slip away, reducing some of the negative feelings she had about herself and quieting the worries that swirled in her mind. “You can’t tell where your body stops and the water begins,” May says. “Because you’re completely buoyant, you also have no sense of the ways that your body distresses you.”Flotation-REST shows promise: in a clinical trial of 68 people hospitalized for anorexia nervosa who were randomly assigned to the therapy or a placebo, Khalsa’s team found that six months after treatment, those who received therapy reported less body dissatisfaction than those who did not. The researchers have also created a version of this therapy for anxiety and depression. In early-stage clinical trials, this intervention appeared to reduce the symptoms of those disorders. Now they are investigating whether this therapy might also benefit people with amphetamine use disorder.Other interoception-based treatments are also under investigation. At Emory University, a group led by clinical psychologist Negar Fani has been examining the effects of combining a mindfulness-based intervention with a wearable device that delivers vibrations corresponding to a person’s breaths. In a group of trauma-exposed individuals, this intervention increased the participants’ confidence in their bodily signals more than the mindfulness-based intervention alone. Even long after these sessions, people report being able to recall the feeling of breath-synced vibrations, Fani says. “It helps to ground them, brings them back into the present moment. They can access their body signals and figure out what they want to do with them.” The team is now conducting a follow-up study to see whether this treatment can improve mental well-being in people who have experienced trauma.In yet another ongoing trial, Nord is collaborating with Garfinkel on a series of studies aimed at understanding in which body systems—and in which of the three dimensions (accuracy, sensibility and awareness)—interoception is altered in people with various mental disorders, among them anxiety and depression. As part of that effort, the researchers are testing interventions, including interoceptive training, mindfulness therapy—to help improve the mind-body connection—and stimulation of the insula with focused ultrasound.Scientists still have plenty of questions to answer about interoception. One major open question is how differences in interoception arise. Some of our interoceptive abilities may begin taking shape during early infanthood. Scientists have discovered that babies as young as three months show differences in the amount of time they spend looking at colored shapes moving either in or out of sync with their heartbeats—a finding that suggests our ability to sense heart rhythms is present at this young age.Interactions with caregivers during one’s first years may play a crucial role in determining how in tune a person becomes with their body. The way a parent responds to an infant’s cues about being hungry, tired or in pain, for instance, may shape how well the child is able to interpret those signals later in life. Although direct evidence for this hypothesis is still lacking, studies have shown that an individual’s early caregiving environment can shape how their body responds to stress.Other factors such as a person’s sex or various environmental conditions, including adversity in early life, may also influence how interoception develops. Some research suggests that adverse experiences, especially chronic, interpersonal trauma early in life, may be key contributors. Clinicians have long observed that traumatic events can lead people to detach or “dissociate” from the body, and some researchers have proposed that this disconnect can disrupt interoceptive processes over time. For a subset of people, these alterations might be linked to an increased likelihood of self-harm and suicide: one 2020 study, for example, found that people with a history of suicide attempts and a diagnosed mental illness, such as anxiety, PTSD or depression, were worse at an interoceptive heartbeat-detection task than those who had the same ailments but had not attempted to take their own life.A person’s interoceptive abilities may change over time. Interoceptive capabilities might be especially malleable during certain life stages: periods such as early childhood, when a person is just learning how to interpret their bodily signals, or adolescence, when puberty is creating a whirlwind of physical changes. It might be one mechanism, among many, that explains why “these times tend to be risk periods for the development of mental illness,” Murphy says.The boundaries of interoception are also only beginning to be understood. In recent years some scientists have become interested in probing the links between the immune system and the brain, which are in constant conversation. An emerging body of work suggests that the brain both keeps tabs on and influences what happens in the immune system, and the immune system can in turn affect the brain. Studies have linked dysfunction in the immune system—namely, inflammation—to mental illnesses such as depression, psychosis and trauma-related disorders. The immune system may affect our mental states over much longer time scales than, say, the heart, which can influence our emotional experiences in real time.Understanding the mysteries of interoception may lead to better therapies for illnesses of the mind—and the body. Some researchers believe that understanding interoception may ultimately be helpful for treating physical symptoms as well. Schulz and his team, for instance, are currently evaluating interoception-based treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome (also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis), a complicated disorder that causes a range of symptoms, including severe tiredness. “Interoception has so much relevance to health in general,” Fani says. “We can’t ignore it anymore.”IF YOU NEED HELPIf you or someone you know is struggling or having thoughts of suicide, help is available. Call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or use the online Lifeline Chat at chat.988lifeline.org.

Health
CO2
Food

Water levels across the Great Lakes are falling – just as US data centers move in

Region struggling with drought now threatened by energy-hungry facilities – but some residents are fighting backThe sign outside Tom Hermes’s farmyard in Perkins Township in Ohio, a short drive south of the shores of Lake Erie, proudly claims that his family have farmed the land here since 1900. Today, he raises 130 head of cattle and grows corn, wheat, grass and soybeans on 1,200 acres of land.For his family, his animals and wider business, water is life. Continue reading...

The sign outside Tom Hermes’s farmyard in Perkins Township in Ohio, a short drive south of the shores of Lake Erie, proudly claims that his family have farmed the land here since 1900. Today, he raises 130 head of cattle and grows corn, wheat, grass and soybeans on 1,200 acres of land.For his family, his animals and wider business, water is life.So when, in May 2024, the Texas-based Aligned Data Centers broke ground on its NEO-01, four-building, 200,000 sq ft data center on a brownfield site that abuts farmland that Hermes rents, he was concerned.“We have city water here. That’s going to reduce the pressure if they are sucking all the water,” he says of the data center.“They’re not good, I know that.”Two years ago, the company said it would invest about $202m on a “hyperscale” data center that would employ 18 people and dozens more in the construction process. Although the company claims it uses a closed-loop, air-cooled system for cooling its computers that can reduce the need for water, artificial intelligence, machine-learning and other high power-demand processes do rely on water as a cooling agent.All the while, a 10-minute drive north, the shoreline of Lake Erie hasn’t been this low in years.Water levels across all five Great Lakes have begun to drop in recent months as part of a long-term fall. Since 2019, the Great Lakes have seen water-level decreases of two to four feet. While experts say this is a natural decrease given the record highs the lakes have experienced since 2020, it’s happening at a time when a huge new consumer of water has appeared on the horizon: data centers.The source of the largest single deposit of freshwater on the planet, the Great Lakes, in particular Lake Erie, are already struggling with the fallout of drought and warmer water temperatures that, at this time of year, fuel major lake-effect snowstorms, and greater than normal levels of evaporation due to the absence of ice cover.With major cities such as Chicago, Toronto, Detroit and Pittsburgh all within a few hundred miles of each other, small, under-resourced communities around the Great Lakes have become hugely attractive for data-center companies.In Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, Microsoft is building what it calls the “world’s most-powerful AI data center” that is set to open early next year and expected to use up to 8.4bn gallons of municipal water from the city of Racine every year. Racine gets its water from Lake Michigan. Similar stories are playing out in Hobart, Indiana, where AWS is planning to build a data center two miles from Lake Michigan’s shoreline, and in Port Washington, Wisconsin.In Benton Harbor, Michigan, locals are concerned that a proposed $3bn data center would contribute to environmental pollution and traffic.Forty miles west of Aligned’s under-construction data center in Ohio, in Woodville Township, hundreds of people showed up to a public meeting last October to voice concern about another proposed data center project in their rural community.“The Great Lakes region, especially in states such as Illinois and Ohio, [is] among the most data-center dense states in the region. In addition to the high volumes of water used on site for cooling, our recent research found that even more water may be consumed to generate electricity to power data centers’ energy needs,” says Kirsten James, senior program director for water at Ceres, a nonprofit headquartered in Boston.“These impacts can conflict with communities’ water-resource planning efforts.”The Great Lakes Compact, a 2005 accord signed by the governors of eight US states and two Canadian provinces, means that Great Lakes Water must only be used within the regional basin.Research by Purdue University found that data centers on average consume about 300,000 gallons of water a day. Water used by data centers is warmed significantly and for those that do not use a closed loop system, that heated effluent water, just 20% of the initial amount, is often discharged back into local wastewater systems or the environment, with potentially serious consequences for flora, fauna and human consumers. Even closed-loop systems that reuse the same water repeatedly need millions of gallons of water.While many new data centers are drawing water from local municipalities that, in turn, get their water from groundwater, much of that supply comes from the Great Lakes watersheds.Some communities are fighting back. Last month, residents of Fife Lake, Michigan, were overjoyed after hearing a plan for a data center in their town of 471 residents would be scrapped due to local opposition.Similar stories of successful opposition have played out in Indiana and elsewhere.But the data centers are fighting back.Private firms representing data center companies have often successfully sued community authorities, accusing them of illegally excluding certain types of developments, making small towns powerless in the battle to keep out giant water-guzzling corporations.In Michigan’s Saline Township, a community of about 400 people outside Ann Arbor, OpenAI and Oracle used a representative company to successfully sue the local authority to overcome opposition and build a massive facility that would use 1.4 gigawatts of electricity – roughly the equivalent of powering 1.4 million homes.The Detroit Free Press editorial board assailed the move, calling it a “a fait accompli, hammered into this tiny Washtenaw county community over the objections of residents, the elected board that represents them, and Michigan’s attorney general, absent expert or outside testimony save a cursory public hearing held over Microsoft Teams”.Data companies and their backers, however, say their presence is a net gain for Great Lakes communities by providing jobs and investment over the course of years.Aligned has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Perkins Township, the local school system and a career center. In return, it gets a 15-year tax exemption from local authorities. A representative declined to respond to questions from the Guardian asking how much water it intends to use at the data center and from where it originates.Local municipalities that support these facilities claim that the data centers will increase tax revenue and help rebuild ageing infrastructure such as water delivery systems that, in some places, are in significant need of upgrading. Calls, emails and messages left with Erie county commissioners asking if local authorities plan to supply the Perkins Township data center with water were not responded to.Some Perkins Township residents say a number of local companies have been hired during the construction phase, bringing work to the area.But many argue those investments are not worth the long-term price the community may pay.Amanda Voegle, who works at a heating business now directly facing the data center, is concerned about water and many other issues.“A couple of years ago, there was a water pollution issue at the site. I’m very concerned. Is this [water] going back into the lake?”Two years ago, the construction site upon which the data center is being built was found to be the source of contamination of a river that flows into Lake Erie, with the remediation company responsible cited by the Ohio EPA for unauthorized discharges into state waters.“I don’t understand why they built it so close to the street, because it’s an eyesore,” says Voegle.She says there have been other unusual incidents at her workplace recently, including power surges.“I don’t know if it’s related [to the data center]. It’s probably almost weekly that we lose power and have to fully reboot everything. There was a couple of things we actually had to replace because [the power surge] fried it.”

Water
Animals
Energy

Climate change is rewriting polar bear DNA

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Changes in polar bear DNA that could help the animals adapt to warmer climates have been detected by researchers in a study thought to be the first time a statistically significant link has been found between […]

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Changes in polar bear DNA that could help the animals adapt to warmer climates have been detected by researchers in a study thought to be the first time a statistically significant link has been found between rising temperatures and changing DNA in a wild mammal species. Climate breakdown is threatening the survival of polar bears. Two-thirds of them are expected to disappear by 2050 as their icy habitat melts and the weather becomes hotter. Now, scientists at the University of East Anglia have found that some genes related to heat stress, aging, and metabolism are behaving differently in polar bears living in southeast Greenland, suggesting they may be adjusting to warmer conditions. The researchers analysed blood samples taken from polar bears in two regions of Greenland and compared “jumping genes” — small, mobile pieces of the genome that can influence how other genes work. Scientists looked at the genes in relation to temperatures in the two regions and at the associated changes in gene expression. “DNA is the instruction book inside every cell, guiding how an organism grows and develops,” said lead researcher Alice Godden. “By comparing these bears’ active genes to local climate data, we found that rising temperatures appear to be driving a dramatic increase in the activity of jumping genes within the southeast Greenland bears’ DNA.” As local climates and diets evolve as a result of changes in habitat and prey forced by global heating, the genetics of the bears appear to be adapting, with the group of bears in the warmest part of the country showing more changes than the communities farther north. The authors of the study have said these changes could help us understand how polar bears might survive in a warming world, inform understanding of which populations are most at risk, and guide future conservation efforts. This is because the findings, published on Friday in the journal Mobile DNA, suggest the genes that are changing play a crucial role in how different polar bear populations are evolving. “This finding is important because it shows, for the first time, that a unique group of polar bears in the warmest part of Greenland are using ‘jumping genes’ to rapidly rewrite their own DNA, which might be a desperate survival mechanism against melting sea ice,” Godden said. Temperatures in northeast Greenland are colder and less variable, while in the southeast, there is a much warmer and less icy environment, with steep temperature fluctuations. DNA sequences in animals change over time, but this process can be accelerated by environmental stress such as a rapidly heating climate. There were some interesting DNA changes, such as in areas linked to fat processing, that could help polar bears survive when food is scarce. Bears in warmer regions had more rough, plant-based diets compared with the fatty, seal-based diets of northern bears, and the DNA of south-eastern bears seemed to be adapting to this. Godden said, “We identified several genetic hotspots where these jumping genes were highly active, with some located in the protein-coding regions of the genome, suggesting that the bears are undergoing rapid, fundamental genetic changes as they adapt to their disappearing sea ice habitat.” The next step will be to look at other polar bear populations, of which there are 20 around the world, to see if similar changes are happening to their DNA. This research could help protect the bears from extinction. But the scientists said it was crucial to stop temperature rises accelerating by reducing the burning of fossil fuels. “We cannot be complacent; this offers some hope but does not mean that polar bears are at any less risk of extinction,” Godden said. “We still need to be doing everything we can to reduce global carbon emissions and slow temperature increases.”

Climate
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Extinction

The country’s biggest magnesium producer went bankrupt. Who’s going to clean up the $100M mess?

US Magnesium, on the shores of Utah’s Great Salt Lake, left a legacy of environmental problems.

Bill Johnson has witnessed the extent of US Magnesium’s pollution up close. He’s seen the wastewater pond that was so acidic it bubbled like a cauldron. He noted where the corrosive liquid had eaten through the soil beneath, and where it burned through earthen barriers and spilled into the neighboring public lands near Utah’s Great Salt Lake. When staff at the company’s facility gave him a safety lecture, Johnson said he was told to remove any corrective lenses. “The chlorine emissions” from the nearby plant, he explained in an interview — “if the wind direction changes and brings that down to ground level, it could melt your contacts.” Johnson, a geology professor at the University of Utah who has done extensive work studying the Great Salt Lake, was brought on as a technical advisor in 2013 to help oversee the Superfund cleanup process at the company’s Rowley plant. That work began in 2009 but it hasn’t progressed much beyond collecting samples and drafting plans to address the pollution. Bill Johnson researches the freshwater aquifer beneath the Great Salt Lake in June. Rick Egan / The Salt Lake Tribune In the five years since Johnson’s last visit to the site, however, US Magnesium’s equipment failed. It stopped producing magnesium metal in late 2021, although it still makes road ice and dust suppression salts. The plant along the Great Salt Lake’s western shore was once the largest producer of magnesium metal in the United States — a so-called “critical mineral” found in a wide array of modern products, including car parts, wind turbines, and solar panels. It was also ramping up to produce lithium, an important component for electric vehicle batteries. But producing those materials took a big environmental toll on Utah. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality cited the plant with additional violations of air quality, water monitoring, environmental cleanup, and wildlife safety nearly every year that followed its mothballing. The company declared bankruptcy in September after pressure from years of insolvency and decades’ worth of regulatory actions came to a head. Now officials in Utah want to evict US Magnesium for good. Utah sued the company last December, attempting to compel it to clean up its mess. At the same time, the state moved to revoke US Magnesium’s mineral lease and end its operations on the state-owned bed of the Great Salt Lake. In an email, US Magnesium president Ron Thayer called discussing legal matters with the press “inappropriate.” He disputed the state and federal governments’ contention that little work has been done to clean up the site, asserting that “significant remediation” was conducted in areas around the plant. In court documents, the company contends that because it is no longer producing magnesium, it cannot afford to pay for further environmental cleanup it is responsible for, nor should it have to until operations resume. The EPA argues that the plant’s obligations are not optional. US Magnesium “has not been a good steward of the land on which it formerly operated,” the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands wrote in its own court filings. The state agency pointed to the unpermitted toxic waste lagoon that pollutes the state-owned lakebed and lies a “stone’s throw” from the water of the Great Salt Lake. Regulators particularly took issue with a berm meant to prevent acidic waste from oozing into the Great Salt Lake that sits unfinished. Smut and gypsum piles at US Magnesium last year. Francisco Kjolseth / The Salt Lake Tribune The EPA told The Salt Lake Tribune that it will take “well over” $100 million to clean up the plant’s decades of environmental problems. And a long list of creditors — from contractors and customers to local, state, and federal governments — claim they have stacks of unpaid bills. And while the mothballed facility’s smokestacks no longer emit chlorine gas, and its unlined canals and ponds no longer flow with acidic waste, Johnson said environmental concerns remain. Based on factors such as the volume of past wastewater releases and what he considers a low number of monitoring wells, he suspects a dangerous, acidic groundwater plume may be inching its way toward the Great Salt Lake — if it’s not impacting the saline ecosystem already — while bankruptcy proceedings drag on through court. In an emailed statement, the EPA said it is working to fully characterize the extent of the site’s groundwater pollution, but “components” of that work are “impacted” by the company’s current bankruptcy status. The EPA declined to say who would be obligated to pay cleanup costs if US Magnesium ultimately doesn’t have the cash. State regulators also didn’t have a direct answer. “The state will take all measures to hold US Magnesium and any other liable party responsible,” a spokesperson for the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands wrote in an email.  Under Superfund law, the federal government aggressively pursues parties responsible for pollution, including current and past operators and potentially their parent companies. Owners of the land where the contamination occurred can also be held liable before the federal government shells out taxpayer funds. But in the US Magnesium case, Superfund law and bankruptcy law are in conflict, said Brigham Daniels, an environmental law professor at the University of Utah. Whether the company’s remaining resources will pay off its many creditors or whether the court will prioritize the environment remains unknown. “It ends up being a little messy,” Daniels said. For state regulators and environmental watchdogs, the bankruptcy and pause on cleanup hit like a frustrating case of deja vu. “It’s a contaminated blot on the landscape,” said Lynn de Freitas, executive director of FRIENDS of Great Salt Lake, “and it’s on a landscape that belongs to all Utahns.” US Magnesium’s Rowley plant, which covers an area roughly the same size as South Salt Lake, produced magnesium metal by concentrating water from the Great Salt Lake in evaporation ponds in a process that created chlorine and other hazardous byproducts. In addition to the EPA’s $100 million estimate for cleanup costs, US Magnesium noted in court filings that it owes at least $95.4 million in debt to its top 20 creditors. That includes nearly $7 million in unpaid property taxes to Tooele County and nearly $1 million to the EPA for administrative costs. It does not include the $67 million in debt owed to Wells Fargo, or the $464,732 the Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands claims the company owes in unpaid royalties from extracting minerals from the Great Salt Lake. The retrofitted waste pond at US Magnesium. Francisco Kjolseth / The Salt Lake Tribune In his email, Thayer denied that his company owes the state unpaid royalties and disputed the EPA’s estimates for cleanup costs. US Magnesium contracted Colorado-based Forgen to build a barrier wall meant to prevent pollution from seeping underground into the Great Salt Lake. Construction began in May 2023, but the contractor stopped work after six months. A Forgen spokesperson said US Magnesium has not paid a single invoice, and the barrier wall sits half finished. The berm is required under a 2021 court-ordered agreement with the EPA called a consent decree. It will take around $10 million to complete the barrier, court documents show. “We believe it should be finished,” said Mike Kirchner, executive vice president of Forgen. “We believe finishing the wall provides some degree of protection.” As part of the state’s lawsuit against US Magnesium, a district judge appointed a receiver on December 13 last year to oversee the company’s affairs. US Magnesium pushed back, and the court reined in the receiver’s scope a week later, assigning him to monitor the facility’s environmental status instead. In court filings, US Magnesium argued that the state’s receiver has only visited its plant once, and questioned whether the additional oversight was necessary. It asserted that it has made “good faith efforts” to comply with environmental requirements and objected to the state’s characterization of its operations as “environmentally irresponsible.” The court recently granted the state’s request to allow the receiver to continue monitoring the plant. Regulators cited the company’s violation of the consent decree, its failure to provide required water monitoring reports, and potential ongoing impacts to the environment from US Magnesium’s current “limited” operations in making their case. Johnson has echoed the state’s concerns. The 4-mile-long boundary along the facility’s waste pond only has a “handful” of wells monitoring groundwater, he said, making any plumes moving toward the Great Salt Lake easy to miss. And based on the facility’s own reports and plans to retrofit and expand the pond area, Johnson suspects that at least two-thirds of the 630 million gallons it discharged every year has seeped underground. The buildup of liquid beneath the facility sometimes caused the ground surface to mound, he said. “Everything was focused on this containment barrier (wall),” Johnson said, “with no focus on, well, what’s downgradient of that?” He prepared a monitoring plan for the site’s potential plume, with an estimated cost of $213,000, at FRIENDS of Great Salt Lake’s request this fall. The nonprofit said it plans to pass the proposal along to state regulators and the receiver. “We can’t allow this sleeping monster,” de Freitas said, “just continue to be out there.” Thayer asserted that site sampling has not shown any evidence of a groundwater plume. In its bankruptcy filings, US Magnesium has put forth a plan to dig itself out of its financial hole. On September 15, days after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware, US Magnesium proposed auctioning off its assets. It offered the court a “stalking horse” bidder, or a party that makes an initial offer and sets a base price for the goods. The proposed bidder is LiMag Holdings, LLC — a new affiliate of Renco, US Magnesium’s New York-based parent company, which is owned by the billionaire Ira Rennert. LiMag was created the same day US Magnesium filed for bankruptcy, Delaware records show. State and federal regulators balked at the proposal. They questioned whether LiMag has a valid business plan that would prevent the plant from winding up in bankruptcy court once again. Federal regulators claimed in court filings that the company is trying to use the bankruptcy as “thinly veiled” leverage to avoid its environmental obligations. In a deposition as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, Thayer noted that the company hasn’t been profitable since at least 2016. Rebuilding the Rowley plant and restarting magnesium production would cost $40 million, Thayer testified. The company also wants to resume producing lithium from its waste piles, which will take another $30 million to $100 million, he added. Lithium saw a surge in demand due to the rise of electric vehicle sales in the U.S., and the company maintains it will be a profitable ongoing source of revenue. But Utah is actively working to revoke US Magnesium’s minerals lease and evict it from state lands. The company also lost its approval to produce lithium from the Great Salt Lake after negotiations with the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands broke down this year, the agency confirmed. US Magnesium in June 2024. Trent Nelson / The Salt Lake Tribune The U.S. government, meanwhile, told the court it wants to protect the environment by holding the company accountable for its obligations. It noted that US Magnesium has further proposed renegotiating its previous cleanup commitments as a condition of sale to LiMag. Specifically, the company asked the court to allow the new subsidiary to modify its agreement with the EPA. It requested to pause environmental cleanup until magnesium production restarts; to release EPA funds meant to ensure taxpayers aren’t on the hook for future cleanup costs so the company can fund current remedial efforts; and to extend the court-ordered schedule for barrier wall construction and waste pond improvements. The federal government pushed back against that proposal, saying it “demonstrates that US Magnesium is attempting to use this case … inappropriately,” according to court documents. The proposal would also get rid of the state’s court-appointed receiver. Instead, the federal and state governments, along with US Magnesium’s many unsecured creditors, asked the court to convert the bankruptcy case to Chapter 7 so that US Magnesium could be liquidated rather than reorganized under a new subsidiary. “Creditors and parties in interest must not be forced to accept a sale,” the U.S. government wrote, “… to a new company that is primed to fail in the same way as two other Renco subsidiaries that operated this same facility.” The Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands filed its own motion supporting the liquidation proposal. “Given the plethora of environmental problems with the land which [US Magnesium] has heavily polluted over the past many years,” the division wrote in its filing, ”it is highly unlikely any potential buyer would purchase its business other than” LiMag and the parent company, Renco. The state and federal governments also noted that US Magnesium and Renco are trying to repeat history by leaving their many creditors in the red and kicking environmental obligations further down the road. “The Debtor has gone through this charade previously,” attorneys for the Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands wrote in their objection, “when it filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy 24 years ago in the Southern District of New York, and used this same playbook: file bankruptcy as far away as possible from its Utah operations (or now, former operations), cleanse the company’s assets through a Bankruptcy … [sell] to its owner, and thus escape payment of its debts.” The Rowley plant has released toxic materials like highly acidic wastewater and cancer-causing chemicals like chlorinated dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls known as PCBs, and hexachlorobenzene in the soils and surface water near the Great Salt Lake since at least the 1990s. Back then, it operated under another Renco subsidiary called Magnesium Corporation of America, or MagCorp. An inspection by the EPA in January 2001 found an array of environmental issues at the MagCorp site. The agency sued MagCorp, threatening $900 million in penalties after it claimed the company misrepresented the extent of its contamination. The EPA described an unlined, 2,000-foot-long and 20-foot-deep canal flowing through the site that workers called the “Red River” because of its color. Sampling found its contents highly acidic and corrosive, and the canal flowed into the facility’s equally acidic and corrosive waste lagoon. MagCorp also dumped unpermitted sludge and solid waste, which contained toxic chemicals like lead, arsenic, and chromium, directly onto the ground. The company declared bankruptcy months after the inspection, in August 2001. Soon after, the company sold off its assets to Renco’s new subsidiary — US Magnesium — despite objections from the U.S. government. That allowed the plant to continue magnesium production even as its multitude of environmental problems sat unresolved. The playa of the Great Salt Lake near US Magnesium’s facility in December 2024. Francisco Kjolseth / The Salt Lake Tribune In 2009, the EPA listed historical pollution under MagCorp’s operation on the National Priorities List and declared it a Superfund site. In 2014, the facility’s reorganized operators spilled 8,000 pounds of hydrochloric acid onto neighboring Bureau of Land Management lands, putting hunters, livestock, and wildlife at risk, according to the EPA. The company finally settled with the EPA in January 2021. It signed the consent decree with the federal agency a few months later. The bankruptcy case closed that June. But just three years later, US Magnesium was back in hot water. In July 2024, the EPA notified the company that it had violated the consent decree. And this fall, the plant operators filed in bankruptcy court once again. In his email, Thayer asserted that the company is not currently generating any waste or emissions regulated by the consent decree. Johnson, the geologist and Superfund advisor, said environmental concerns remain at the US Magnesium site, even though it’s in a remote location. “There’s no doubt that there is a toxic risk,” he said. In August, the EPA issued another letter to the company, asserting that the waste ponds posed a “significant” hazard to birds. While they’re not currently in use or full of acidic water, the ponds include “now-exposed, highly contaminated sediments,” the agency wrote, and birds are using them as habitat. “EPA has been working to ensure US Magnesium, regardless of its operating status, complies with its obligations,” a spokesperson wrote in an email. US Magnesium was required to set aside $16.5 million in financial assurance as part of the cleanup agreement with the EPA, and add funds to those accounts as needed based on updated cost estimates. The federal agency used money from the first bankruptcy settlement to set up the initial tranche — funds US Magnesium now wants released as part of its proposed sale to LiMag. The company failed to hand over $1.5 million the EPA required in supplemental funds last year, according to court filings by the agency. While the bankruptcy court decides how to settle US Magnesium’s debts, it’s unclear who will pick up the tab to complete cleanup at the site, especially if it permanently shutters. “The Division is working with our legal counsel to ensure the state’s interests in the bankruptcy proceedings are fully represented and protected,” a spokesperson for the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands wrote in an email. Whether Renco and US Magnesium are able to get the same results from their previous bankruptcy — shifting their assets free of liens to a new corporation, discharging their debts and paying creditors just a fraction of what’s owed, as the state asserts — is now in the hands of a judge. “It depends on whether or not the court will think it’s what’s best for society,” said Brook Gotberg, a law professor at Brigham Young University. “It almost creates an odd tension where we need this plant to continue so that it will remediate these environmental harms.” Liquidating the company could mean that workers’ pensions go unpaid, the country permanently loses its largest producer of a vital mineral, and the state and the EPA are stuck figuring out how to pay for the mess. Still, Gotberg said, there’s a case to be made for the court to shut down US Magnesium’s operations for good. “Especially if those environmental claims carry over,” she said, “I don’t know how they can make it profitable.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The country’s biggest magnesium producer went bankrupt. Who’s going to clean up the $100M mess? on Dec 16, 2025.

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At 91, Eva Clayton Is Still Fighting for Food Justice and Farmers’ Rights

As the first Black woman to represent North Carolina in Congress, elected to the House in 1992 to serve the district now under threat, Clayton had broken the racial barrier, and in every election since, constituents there had elected a Black Democrat to represent them. The new maps, developed mid-decade at the urging of Donald […] The post At 91, Eva Clayton Is Still Fighting for Food Justice and Farmers’ Rights appeared first on Civil Eats.

A Life of Purpose• Eva Clayton, the first Black woman to represent North Carolina in Congress, first found her calling during the Civil Rights era, in 1963, organizing farmers. • She went on to serve five sequential terms in Congress, sitting on the Agricultural Committee throughout her tenure. • Clayton paved the way for Pigford vs. USDA, the most consequential decision for Black farmers in history. She also expanded food stamps under the 2002 Farm Bill. • In 2003, at 69, she joined the United Nations in Rome, and for several years led a global anti-hunger effort. • While pursuing her political career, Clayton raised four children with her husband, a lawyer. Eva Clayton was outraged. It was late October, and the North Carolina legislature had just introduced a swiftly moving plan to redraw the congressional map for the First District, where she lived, to dilute Black voting power and favor Republicans. As the first Black woman to represent North Carolina in Congress, elected to the House in 1992 to serve the district now under threat, Clayton had broken the racial barrier, and in every election since, constituents there had elected a Black Democrat to represent them. The new maps, developed mid-decade at the urging of Donald Trump, cut majority-Black counties out of the First District and lumped them into the conservative Third District. This virtually ensured that Clayton’s district could not elect a Democrat, especially a Black Democrat, again. Never one to stay silent, 91-year-old Clayton put on a gray suit, arranged a pink-and-green scarf around her shoulders, and rode an hour and a half south from her home in rural Warren County to Raleigh. Clayton walks with a metal cane, and at five feet, she wasn’t much taller than the wooden podium in the legislative office building’s meeting room. But her tone was fierce as she addressed the lawmakers. While some may not have heard of her, within her home state, Clayton is a towering figure in food politics. “Shame on this General Assembly,” she said, an edge to her deep, smooth voice, “for silencing the will of the people in northeastern North Carolina, a true swing district that reflects the diversity of the state . . . . What you are doing today means you are against democracy.” While some may not have heard of her, within her home state, Clayton is a towering figure in food politics—someone who has transformed people’s lives for the better on the local, regional, national, and international levels. After her Congressional win in the early ’90s, Clayton went on to serve five terms, sitting on the Agriculture Committee her entire tenure and fighting for food access and the rights of small farmers. In 1999, she was instrumental in pushing through the historic Pigford discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which awarded the plaintiffs, all Black farmers, more than $1 billion—the largest civil rights settlement ever awarded at that time. She also expanded food stamps to include documented immigrants in the 2002 Farm Bill, helping strengthen food security for thousands of families. After her political service, Clayton, then 69, took her work to a global level, leading the United Nations in an effort to reduce hunger worldwide. And now, she helps guide the Eva Clayton Rural Food Institute, a regional nonprofit that increases food access for rural families and small farmers in her community. On that October day in Raleigh, as the Assembly moved to dismantle the district she had championed for most of her life, an interviewer for the North Carolina Black Alliance caught up to her in the hallway. “She is a powerful force, but also a gentle force. She has the soul of a great warrior.” Clayton had more to say, now speaking directly to her community, mired in the ongoing government shutdown: “They’re taking so many things away, taking food from hungry people, taking help from people who need help . . . and taking the right to determine who represents you, all at the same time,” she said, sweeping her arm for emphasis. “In spite of that, folks, stand up. Speak up for democracy. We need you.” The following day, despite Clayton’s impassioned argument, the legislature formally approved the new maps, and the First District is predicted to go Republican in the 2026 election. Virginia farmer Michael Carter compares Clayton to leaders before and after the Antebellum Era, motivated not by ego but by doing what was right. “She is a powerful force, but also a gentle force,” he says. “She has the soul of a great warrior.” Finding Her Footing Born in 1934, Clayton was raised in Savannah and Augusta, Georgia, by a charismatic, outgoing father who worked as a life insurance agent (“he could sell life insurance to a tombstone!” says Clayton) and a stern but loving mother who, as a PTA president, organized daily fresh fruit for Clayton’s school, which lacked even a cafeteria. It was Clayton’s first glimpse of food justice, something she came to see later as a foreshadowing of her own hunger relief efforts. Clayton at home in Savannah, Georgia, after her kindergarten graduation. (Photo courtesy of Eva Clayton)
 As she matured, Clayton began questioning the racism of the segregated South, and a spiritual awakening at a bible camp during high school gave her an abiding approach to countering injustice. “I understood Christ was for love, and I could show that,” she said. “I could be a beacon.” Intent on becoming a medical missionary in Africa, Clayton studied biology at Johnson C. Smith University, a historically Black college in Charlotte. There she met her future husband, Theaoseus Theaboyd “T.T.” Clayton, a charming senior from a farming family. Both went on to earn master’s degrees—he in law, she in biology and general science. Between getting her degrees, Clayton traveled to Chicago to intern with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker peace and social justice organization. Their seminars and forums helped shape her worldview. “They tried to teach me how to speak up against the policy of the person without taking down the person,” she said. “That experience sharpened my insight on how to be engaged with people, not only in terms of presenting [ideas to them] but also listening. The Quakers have a sense of the long view . . . They’re committed not only to peace but to peaceful ways.” Building a Voice for the First District When I met Clayton recently at her Warren County home, a tidy, split-level ranch on the shores of Lake Gaston, she welcomed me in with a broad smile and the same direct gaze I’d seen in her many Congressional portraits. Her once-dark hair was cropped short and mostly white, and she was well put together in a navy striped dress shirt, round silver necklace, and dangly silver earrings. She had been sorting through papers and photographs to make space for her son Martin and his wife, who were about to move in, but the walls of her basement den were still covered in pictures of herself with presidents, dignitaries, and Pope John Paul II. “It’s like spending the night in the Eva Clayton Museum,” her daughter Joanne told me later, chuckling. “I know what MLK’s children must have felt like.” Most of her collection, though, was in her sunroom, packed into file boxes scattered across the floor. Clayton delightedly unearthed an artifact: a newspaper article about a voter registration project she organized in Warren County, back in 1963. That summer changed the course of her life—and the future of her district. Clayton, T.T., and their two young children had moved to the county the year before, when T.T. accepted a law partnership in the town of Warrenton, creating the first integrated firm in the state’s history. Proud to finally have a Black lawyer in town, the community embraced the Clayton family. And Clayton found her small-town neighbors—who sometimes paid her husband in meat from their farms—to be warm and kind. “I fell in love with them, and they showed the love to me too,” she said. The countryside around Warrenton was lush, but poor. Two out of three people were Black, nine out of ten lived on farms, and many were sharecroppers who had to turn over a portion of their monthly income to their white landlords. With the Voting Rights Act of 1965 still a few years from passing and Southern states still employing tactics like literacy tests to suppress votes, few Black people in the area were registered to vote, and none served in government. Farmers harvesting tobacco in the Warren County Hecks Grove community, 1960s. (Photo courtesy of Judith Beil Vaughan)
 In 1963, Clayton helped drive student volunteers to isolated pockets of Warren County to try to convince rural residents, including tenant farmers like the woman in this photo, to register to vote. “Without knowing,” Clayton said recently, “I was teaching myself that I could be engaged with people, I could lead.” (Photo courtesy of Judith Beil Vaughan)
 At 29, Clayton quickly realized that, rather than pursue her dream of being a missionary in Africa, she could help and heal her new community instead. She decided to launch a voter registration project, inviting the Quaker group she had interned with in Chicago to help. Fourteen college students and three leaders—the first integrated group the area had ever seen—moved into a six-room apartment above Brown’s Superette grocery store downtown. Over the summer, the volunteers held workshops at rural churches and community centers throughout the region to educate would-be voters about the Constitution and the voting process, even holding mock elections. Clayton helped the young volunteers understand local customs and took them to buy groceries. When the segregated laundromat kicked them out, she let them do laundry at her house, and when the Klan showed up outside their downtown apartment to intimidate them, she invited them over to sleep on her floor. In her puttery Renault, she drove the volunteers through the tobacco, cotton, and peanut fields of Warren, Franklin, and Vance counties to find unregistered voters recommended by church and community leaders. Meeting tenant farmers in bare-bones wooden houses with no electricity or running water was eye-opening for Clayton—“I didn’t know people lived that way,” she said—and the task was tall: to persuade them to overcome their lack of confidence, fear, or distrust of the political system and take action. A voter education workshop at Brookston Baptist Church, Warren County, 1963. To build familiarity and confidence with the voting process, student volunteers held several mock elections, where they playacted as candidates and participants cast their ballots. (Photo courtesy of Judith Beil Vaughan) That summer, Clayton discovered ways of working with people that she would use throughout her career. She learned that the farmers were most likely to sign up and vote when she used “we,” asking them to join her rather than telling them what to do or doing it for them. “Part of my strategy in life has been [to say] not that I’m doing this for your good, but we’re doing it together,” she said. “People bring their strength when they know they’re needed.” By the summer’s end, the group had conducted more than 30 workshops throughout the region. When the Claytons moved to Warrenton in 1962, the town had a newspaper, a movie theater, two grocery stores, and a department store. (Photo courtesy of Judith Beil Vaughan)
 Like everywhere in the South at the time, segregation was the rule in Warrenton in the 1960s. (Photo courtesy of Judith Beil Vaughan) Clayton then turned her sights to matters in town, organizing a protest against the sandwich shop that her husband’s law partner ran downstairs from their office on Market Street. A favorite spot in town for Black and white people alike, the counter served hot dogs, hamburgers, barbecue, and milk shakes—and everyone knew what the partition along the counter was for. “It needed to go,” Clayton said firmly. “I mean, if you’re integrated upstairs, why couldn’t you be integrated downstairs?” T.T. and his law partner were working upstairs when they looked out the front windows and noticed Clayton in a group of picketers on the sidewalk. “My husband’s partner said, ‘Clayton, is that your wife down there? What’s she doing? Tell her not to do that!’ [And my husband said,] ‘YOU tell her!’” Soon after that, Clayton said, “The partition left—it quietly went away.” It was her first time standing up against injustice. “I thought to myself that I had talent, and I had an obligation to try to make a difference,” she said. “And I still feel that way, if I’m being honest with you.” Clayton Goes to Congress Clayton took her first run at Congress in 1968, purely to encourage people to register to vote. “I ran and lost royally,” Clayton said. “But I registered people all throughout the district, and that was the beauty of it.” Voter registration increased by 25 percent in Warren County—the highest increase until then and since. “I saw, in many small towns where they had a majority, Blacks became mayors.” They began to hold other offices too, she added. “They saw the strength of their constituency.” Clayton dedicated the next couple of decades to working in local and state politics, all while she and T.T. raised a family of now four children. One of her most notable efforts was her support of the landmark Warren County toxic-waste protests in 1982, considered the beginning of the national environmental justice movement. Clayton put up bond for those arrested. Hundreds participated in the protest, and according to Cosmos George, former president of the Warren County NAACP, Clayton’s extensive voter registration work over the years was a big reason why. “To me, the major thing she did was christen Warren County to become politically aware,” he said. “To me, the major thing she did was christen Warren County to become politically aware.” Then, 24 years after her first national run, in 1992, Clayton entered the Democratic primary to represent those neighbors, the people of North Carolina’s First Congressional District. “The Best for the First,” her campaign wrote on T-shirts, plaques, and the sides of their cars. Despite her optimism, racism shadowed the campaign—at one point, a man spat toward her as she shook hands with constituents. Joanne remembers her mother rising above the disrespect and never reacting to it, summing up her attitude with, “You want more [from people], but you’re ready for it.” Ultimately, Clayton prevailed, advancing to the national stage and becoming the first Black woman to represent North Carolina in Congress. “The Lord is good,” she told The Virginian-Pilot as she moved ahead of her Republican rival. A Fierce Advocate for Farmers Soon after Clayton took office, she was elected president of her freshman class—and earned a spot on the Agricultural Committee, the most effective way she saw to serve her constituents. At the time, the Ag Committee was an old-boys club; their dismissive attitude toward her made her angry and indignant. “They tolerated me,” Clayton told a Congressional historian for a recording in 2015, frustration in her voice. “They treated me as an outsider; I had to prove to them I was worthy of negotiating with.” Eva Clayton, top right, on the floor of Congress in the 1990s. (Photo courtesy of Eva Clayton)
 Because the committee during most of her tenure was almost all white and controlled by Republicans, Clayton had to quickly learn how to work with people who didn’t agree with her. “They need you sometimes, and you need them,” she said in an interview with PBS. “You have to begin to understand the value of being able to communicate with a variety of people, not just your friends—and respect their views . . . because you want to persuade them to respect your views.” Saxby Chambliss, a Republican from Georgia who served in the House from 1995 to 2003 before becoming a Senator, worked with Clayton on the Ag Committee and negotiated with her on two farm bills. “Eva is a really nice lady, but she was forceful in her opinion about the issues she cared about,” Chambliss remembered. “Republicans were in control, so when it came to her issues, she knew she was going uphill. But she never wavered.” Ellen Teller, who has worked with the Washington, D.C.–based Food Research and Action Center since 1986 and met with Clayton frequently during her years on the Ag Committee, remembered how Clayton invoked “this air of authority and knowledge tempered with just the right amount of intimidation . . . Being one of the first African American women on the House Ag Committee, she needed to be collaborative and wonderful to work with. But she wasn’t going to let those guys walk all over her.” In her third term, Clayton was essential to advancing one of the most consequential decisions for farmers in U.S. history. In 1997, Timothy Pigford, a Black soybean and corn farmer in Cumberland County, North Carolina, filed a class-action lawsuit charging the USDA with racial discrimination in its lending and assistance programs. The 400 plaintiffs held that the local county commissioners charged with doling out federal money at the beginning of each growing season—which they relied on to purchase seed, fertilizer, and farm equipment—would delay or deny their applications based on their race or apply more restrictions to the money. Many of the plaintiffs faced financial ruin and lost their farms as a result. When Pigford first filed, the plaintiffs ran up against the Equal Credit Opportunity’s statute of limitations, which excluded them from pursuing compensation for discrimination more than two years in the past. The Ag Committee—which was predominantly white—refused to vote on removing the limiting statute, which would have allowed the lawsuit to proceed. Clayton was determined that these farmers have a chance to seek justice. She found a strategy mentor in John Conyers, a Black Democrat from Michigan who was the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. He advised her to try introducing the removal of the statute of limitations as an amendment on the floor of the Appropriations Committee. When the agriculture appropriations bill came up, Clayton asked the speaker for permission to introduce the amendment, which he granted her. Not wanting Clayton’s amendment to stand in the way of passing their budget, the members of her committee voted for it. “I thank God for Conyers,” Clayton said. “That’s how we got the statute of limitations removed,” she said, enabling the historic lawsuit to proceed. It grew to include more than 22,700 plaintiffs across the South, seeking restitution for decades of discrimination that had led to massive land loss among Black farming families. In 1999, a federal judge approved a settlement agreement for more than $1 billion. Just over 15,500 claimants have received compensation, most getting $50,000, though the disbursal of funds has been far from perfect and many believe the per-farmer sum is not nearly enough to compensate for the damage. For farmers like Warren County’s Arthur Brown—who was part of the second round of Pigford claims—Clayton was a critical voice in Washington. “Eva Clayton spoke for him,” Brown’s son Patrick said. “She went to the local town halls and got information [from farmers] to carry back to Washington to advocate on their behalf.” Pigford II claims were settled in 2010, for an additional $1.25 billion. Clayton said she made a point of meeting with the people in her district at least six times a year, and more often during extended recesses. Hearing directly from those impacted by policies, she said, helped strengthen her arguments and helped her see, as she put it, “where you’re being effective and where there’s possibility.” She also pushed for qualified Black people to lead at least four USDA agencies in North Carolina, including the Farm Service Agency and the Risk Management Agency, said Archie Hart, a special assistant to the North Carolina commissioner of agriculture. For the first time, this opened the door for Black farmers to participate in programs like crop insurance and environmental incentive programs. Between 1978 and 2000, Black farmers in North Carolina had lost 70 percent of their land, Hart said. Clayton’s efforts to connect farmers to federal assistance, he said, “stopped the bleeding.” Protecting and Expanding Federal Food Assistance Clayton was equally dedicated to food access. The welfare reform law that Republicans passed in 1996 made deep cuts to the food stamp program, lowering the maximum benefit, eliminating eligibility for many documented immigrants, and adding work requirements. In the years that followed, Clayton played a key role in the movement to restore food stamps, said Teller. As the senior Democrat on the Ag subcommittee responsible for nutrition programs, she helped author the 2002 Farm Bill which, among other things, expanded food stamp eligibility to documented immigrants in the U.S. and to their children, providing vital assistance to an additional one million legal immigrants working for a better life. Clayton meets with Newt Gingrich, speaker of the House, in the mid 1990s. “FEED the FOLKS” was her campaign to protect the federal school lunch program from drastic cuts proposed by Republicans. (Photo courtesy of Eva Clayton) Former Rep. Chambliss remembers Clayton sharing the lived experiences of her constituents with the committee. “Because she represented a poor district, she had a lot of anecdotes she could use to back up her position” that the government needed to strengthen its social safety net, he said. As a negotiator, he said, she was very effective: “Just look at the numbers—in the ’02 bill, we bumped up food stamps pretty good.” As Clayton advocated for nutrition assistance, she consistently countered the prevailing stereotypes about Black people, said Hart of North Carolina’s agriculture department. “A lot of other cultures have you down as ‘Black people are just lazy,’” he said. “There are so many prejudices, and she was able to say, ‘Let me explain my culture. People aren’t asking for a handout—they’re asking for their God-given right as citizens.’” Balancing Politics and Motherhood Clayton manages to combine intense focus and determination with grandmotherly warmth and a quick sense of humor. During my visits, she called me “darling,” chatted easily about her grandkids and garden, ribbed me for asking too many questions, and once offered me lunch from her fridge so I wouldn’t drive home on an empty stomach. Throughout her career, she was raising her daughter and three sons in rural Warren County. As they grew, she drove them to piano, dance, karate, and basketball practices in nearby towns, Joanne remembers, and when they got sick, she would put washcloths on their foreheads, rub menthol on their chests, and hum them to sleep. Clayton at her house on Lake Gaston, North Carolina. While pursuing a political career, she and her husband raised four children; she now has six grandchildren, too. (Photo credit: Christina Cooke) While Clayton expressed her love in many ways, cooking was not one of them, Joanne continues. “My mother could not cook with a damn,” she said, laughing. (Her father, on the other hand, was excellent in the kitchen.) “My mother burnt toast so much that my father would order burnt toast in restaurants. You know you’re a good husband when you accept defeat: ‘She can’t cook, and not only do I have burnt toast, I want burnt toast. That’s how much I love you, baby.’” Clayton’s feeling of responsibility to her community often drew her away from her family. She was consistently busy with meetings and functions. And sometimes, her drive to better the world came at the expense of her children’s feelings. In 1963, T.T. filed a lawsuit to desegregate the Warren County Schools, and the Claytons sent Joanne to first grade at the all-white Mariam Boyd Elementary. Joanne simply “got through it,” she said, as the other kids subjected her to spitballs and other insults. “I probably should have been more concerned about my kids, but I thought they could handle it,” said Clayton, who sent Theaoseus Jr. and Martin to the same school later. In preparing her kids beforehand, Clayton focused more on the courage required than the harm they might face. Despite the difficulty, Clayton is exceedingly proud to have played a part in integrating the schools and feels the hardship her kids endured was worth it. “Nobody really harmed them,” she said. “They were isolated, I’m sure of that. But they did all right.” Combatting Hunger Worldwide—and at Home Clayton had long said she would serve in Congress for only 10 years. And when that anniversary arrived in 2002, she stepped aside. A year later, she was appointed the assistant director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, based in Rome—fulfilling, in a way, her childhood dream of helping others abroad. At the FAO, she worked on a coalition to cut world hunger in half by 2015, a goal set at the 1996 World Food Summit. The group did not meet its ambitious goal, but, said Clayton, “we organized alliances and partnerships in 24 countries and got people to see the value of working together. That is one thing I still look back on with great pride.” Clayton met with Pope John Paul II to engage the Catholic church in the United Nations effort to halve world hunger, circa 2004. (Photo courtesy of Eva Clayton) Various international organizations, including Rotary International, signed on to the hunger-reduction effort. Clayton met with the pope to get the Catholic church involved, and groups like Bread for the World, a U.S.-based Christian anti-hunger advocacy organization, enlisted as well. Though she is back in Warren County now, Clayton has not given up on the wish to make a dent in food insecurity. “I’ll go to my grave not having fulfilled the goal,” she said, “but I do want to end my existence still trying.” And that is exactly what she is doing, lending her support to a food-security effort closer to home. In 2023, the Green Rural Redevelopment Organization (GRRO), a nonprofit that tackles poverty, food insecurity, and chronic disease in north-central North Carolina, launched a food justice network and named it the Eva Clayton Rural Food Institute to build on her legacy. Clayton is focusing on food in her own life too. T.T. died in 2019, a blow to her heart and spirit. In his absence, she has started teaching herself to cook. “Now I’m wanting to cook the special things,” she said, “like salmon cakes for breakfast.” A Life of Purpose Clayton, who still speaks publicly on a regular basis, stands in front of the stately red-brick county courthouse in Warrenton in a mid-calf pink and navy dress. The town is celebrating Juneteenth today, and its leaders have requested she speak. “She looks good!” the woman beside me whispers to her friend as Clayton begins. Clayton speaking at the Juneteenth celebration at the Warrenton county courthouse this year. (Photo Credit: Christina Cooke) “This is a day of freedom we are celebrating,” Clayton tells the crowd. “But freedom is really not free.” Citizens are the most vital part of a democracy—more important that elected leaders, she continues. “Citizens elect officials. But we elect them and leave them; we don’t hold them accountable.” Engage with your elected officials, she entreats, pointing her cane in the air. “Freedom requires us collectively to walk forward.” She hands off the mic to a vigorous round of applause and cheers. After mingling and saying goodbye to well-wishers, Clayton heads toward her car parked a few blocks from the courthouse, making her way with care down the uneven sidewalk. On the left, its façade chipped and faded, stands the building that housed T.T.’s law office and his partner’s sandwich shop, where she protested segregation more than 60 years ago. Clayton says she feels grateful to have the desire to still be involved. “At some point, people say, ‘I don’t want to be bothered with certain things,’” she says. “But I do want to be bothered with things. I think that’s a blessing, to live with a purpose.”   The post At 91, Eva Clayton Is Still Fighting for Food Justice and Farmers’ Rights appeared first on Civil Eats.

Food
Agriculture
Education

How the Trump administration is fast-tracking logging in Illinois’ only national forest

Facing pressure to increase timber harvests, the Forest Service is sidestepping rigorous environmental reviews and limiting public participation.

When the Forest Service approved the sale of nearly 70 acres for commercial logging in southern Illinois’ Shawnee National Forest in late 2024, Sam Stearns was furious. The Shawnee is the only national forest in the state, and one of the smallest in the nation. The agency initially billed the so-called McCormick Oak-Hickory Restoration Project timber sale as a “thinning” operation to remove older trees and make room for younger saplings. Logging operations contribute to habitat loss, and Stearns found the Forest Service’s justification lacking. “Never in the history of this planet has a forest been logged back to health,” said the 71-year-old Stearns. Stearns, who is the founder of the preservation group Friends of Bell Smith Spring, planned to oppose the sale. He began keeping an eye out for the agency’s public comment period, which provided residents like him an opportunity to voice their concerns. For months, he and other local environmentalists scoured the web and local newspapers for mentions of the sale to prepare for the comment period, but the McCormick Project never turned up.   It would turn out that the Forest Service advertised the project under a completely different name. The sale was titled “V-Plow,” and by the time advocates realized it, they were already a week into the project’s three-week comment period. In the past, advocates said comment periods for logging operations lasted as long as 45 days. Court documents would later reveal that the agency initially didn’t receive any bids. It eventually awarded the contract to an interested buyer in Kentucky in June 2025.  The following month, Stearns and other environmentalists sued the agency to block the plan. They cited the presence of endangered bats and potential impacts to a nearby national natural landmark and alleged that the Forest Service had violated the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Earlier this fall, a federal judge temporarily blocked the project before allowing the logging to proceed. The case is still pending, and a spokesperson for the Forest Service declined to comment due to the ongoing litigation. The legal battle is part of a broader clash between fast-tracking projects and ensuring environmental reviews as required by federal law. NEPA mandates that federal agencies consider the environmental impacts of projects, but it includes a provision for “categorical exclusions” that let agencies bypass full reviews and limit public participation for minor proposals. “This can be a legitimate process, for instance, when used for routine things where the impacts are minimal and well established, like campsite or trail maintenance,” said Garrett Rose, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Unfortunately, this administration has been working to aggressively expand the exemptions available to [the Forest Service], and minimize disclosure of projects impacted by categorical exclusions.” In 2023, the Biden administration attempted to use these shortcuts to speed up permitting for projects like renewable energy and broadband internet. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump began pressing the Forest Service to fast-track timber harvests on public lands. In one executive order, he directed the Forest Service to adopt categorical exclusions developed by other agencies to “reduce unnecessarily lengthy processes.” That means, for example, the Forest Service could use categorical exclusions developed by the Department of Agriculture’s rural development agency for wastewater treatment plants or transmission lines, according to Rose. The order also instructed the Forest Service to develop new exclusions for “thinning” projects related to wildfire mitigation. Advocates fear the agency is applying categorical exclusions more widely than before for logging projects to comply with Trump’s directive. Local watchdog groups across the country are scrambling to make sure the public has a chance to provide input when logging and oil and gas extraction are approved on public lands. Ryan Talbott, a conservation advocate with Wildearth Guardians in the Pacific Northwest, said the Forest Service recently cited categorical exclusions developed by the Tennessee Valley Authority to approve a logging project in Mount Hood National Forest, which excused it from the standard robust public comment process. The agency also utilized the same categorical exclusion to move a project forward in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. “This all comes back to Trump’s timber executive order,” Talbott said. “They’re looking for every possible avenue to expedite timber production.”  In Indiana, environmentalists recently scored a rare victory against the Forest Service. In September, a federal judge stopped a logging project in the Hoosier National Forest, siding with local advocates who argued the agency’s plan violated NEPA. The ruling found that the Forest Service did not properly weigh the environmental impacts of a proposal to log 4,000 acres and clearcut 4,000 more, among other actions, within Indiana’s only national forest.   In Illinois, however, Stearns’ lawsuit is still ongoing. A Kentucky logging crew harvested about half of the nearly 70-acre timber sale in late August before temporarily halting in early September due to Stearns’ lawsuit. The loggers have yet to finish the job.  Standing at a distance from the cut hillsides in late November, Stearns said the Forest Service is bad at a lot of things, but they’re good at one thing: cutting down trees.  “Even if they were getting a premium price for this wood, which I know they’re not, those trees would be much more valuable standing, contributing to the health of an ecosystem, than they’ll ever be cut like that,” he said.  Editor’s note: The Natural Resources Defense Council is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How the Trump administration is fast-tracking logging in Illinois’ only national forest on Dec 16, 2025.

Forests
Agriculture
Energy

Iraq's Dreams of Wheat Independence Dashed by Water Crisis

NAJAF, Iraq, Dec 16 (Reuters) - Iraqi wheat farmer Ma'an al-Fatlawi has long depended on the nearby Euphrates River to feed his ‌fields near ​the...

NAJAF, Iraq, Dec 16 (Reuters) - Iraqi wheat farmer Ma'an al-Fatlawi has long depended on the nearby Euphrates River to feed his ‌fields near ​the city of Najaf. But this year, those waters, which made ‌the Fertile Crescent a cradle of ancient civilisation 10,000 years ago, are drying up, and he sees few options."Drilling wells is not successful in our land, because ​the water is saline," al-Fatlawi said, as he stood by an irrigation canal near his parched fields awaiting the release of his allotted water supply. A push by Iraq - historically among the Middle East's biggest wheat importers - to guarantee food security by ensuring wheat production ‍covers the country's needs has led to three successive annual surpluses ​of the staple grain. But those hard-won advances are now under threat as the driest year in modern history and record-low water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have reduced planting and could slash the harvest by up to 50% this season.     "Iraq ​is facing one of the ⁠most severe droughts that has been observed in decades," the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's Iraq representative Salah El Hajj Hassan told Reuters. VULNERABLE TO NATURE AND NEIGHBOURSThe crisis is laying bare Iraq's vulnerability.A largely desert nation, Iraq ranks fifth globally for climate risk, according to the U.N.'s Global Environment Outlook. Average temperatures in Iraq have risen nearly half a degree Celsius per decade since 2000 and could climb by up to 5.6 C by the end of the century compared to the period before industrialisation, according to the International Energy Agency. Rainfall is projected to decline.But Iraq is also at the mercy of its neighbours for 70% of its water supply. And Turkey ‌and Iran have been using upstream dams to take a greater share of the region's shared resource.The FAO says the diminishing amount of water that has trickled down to Iraq is the biggest factor behind ​the ‌current crisis, which has forced Baghdad to introduce ‍rationing. Iraq's water reserves have plunged from 60 billion cubic ⁠metres in 2020 to less than 4 billion today, said El Hajj Hassan, who expects wheat production this season to drop by 30% to 50%. "Rain-fed and irrigated agriculture are directly affected nationwide," he said.EFFORTS TO END IMPORT DEPENDENCE UNDER THREATTo wean the country off its dependence on imports, Iraq's government has in recent years paid for high-yield seeds and inputs, promoted modern irrigation and desert farming to expand cultivation, and subsidised grain purchases to offer farmers more than double global wheat prices. It is a plan that, though expensive, has boosted strategic wheat reserves to over 6 million metric tons in some seasons, overwhelming Iraq's silo capacity. The government, which purchased around 5.1 million tons of the 2025 harvest, said in September that those reserves could meet up to a year of demand. Others, however, including Harry Istepanian - a water expert and founder of Iraq Climate Change Center - now expect imports to rise again, putting the country at greater risk of higher food prices with knock-on effects for trade and government budgets."Iraq's water ​and food security crisis is no longer just an environmental problem; it has immediate economic and security spillovers," Istepanian told Reuters.A preliminary FAO forecast anticipates wheat import needs for the 2025/26 marketing year to increase to about 2.4 million tons.Global wheat markets are currently oversupplied, offering cheaper options, but Iraq could once again face price volatility. Iraq's trade ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the likelihood of increased imports.In response to the crisis, the ministry of agriculture capped river-irrigated wheat at 1 million dunams in the 2025/26 season - half last season's level - and mandated modern irrigation techniques including drip and sprinkler systems to replace flood irrigation through open canals, which loses water through evaporation and seepage. A dunam is a measurement of area roughly equivalent to a quarter acre. The ministry is allocating 3.5 million dunams in desert areas using groundwater. That too is contingent on the use of modern irrigation."The plan was implemented in two phases," said Mahdi Dhamad al-Qaisi, an advisor to the agriculture minister. "Both require modern irrigation."Rice cultivation, meanwhile, which is far more water-intensive than wheat, was banned nationwide.RURAL LIVELIHOODS AT RISKOne ton of wheat production in Iraq requires about 1,100 cubic metres of water, said Ammar Abdul-Khaliq, head of the Wells and Groundwater Authority in southern Iraq. Pivoting to more dependence on wells to replace river water is risky. "If water extraction continues without scientific study, groundwater reserves will decline," he said. Basra aquifers, he said, have ​already fallen by three to five metres. Groundwater irrigation systems are also expensive due to the required infrastructure like sprinklers and concrete basins. That presents a further economic challenge to rural Iraqis, who make up around 30% of the population. Some 170,000 people have already been displaced in rural areas due to water scarcity, the FAO's El Hajj Hassan said. "This is not a matter of only food security," he said. "It's worse when we look at it from the perspective of livelihoods."At his farm in Najaf, al-Fatlawi is now experiencing that first-hand, having cut his wheat acreage to a fifth of its normal level this season and laid ​off all but two of his 10 workers. "We rely on river water," he said.(Reporting by Sarah El Safty in Dubai and Moayed Kenany in Baghdad; Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Maher Nazeh in Baghdad, Ahmed Saeed in Najaf, and Mohammed Ati in Basra; Editing by Joe Bavier)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

Crisis
Water
Climate

Workers were exposed to toxic chemicals in firefighting foam

For decades it was 3M's biggest outside the US, and the factory made nappy fastenings and video tape.

Workers were exposed to toxic chemicals in firefighting foamAnna MeiselandEsme Stallard,BBC File on 4 InvestigatesGeograph/ Nigel DaviesThe 3M factory in Swansea was once its biggest outside the US, but it made the decision to close it two years ago Dozens of factory workers were exposed to toxic chemicals within firefighting foam over decades, BBC File on 4 Investigates can reveal.Multi-billion-pound US manufacturer, 3M, failed to tell employees at its Swansea site they were using foam containing two forever chemicals, now classed as carcinogenic, despite knowing for decades of the health risks.The company said it would stop manufacturing the forever chemicals – so called because they persist in the environment – in 2002, but failed to remove them from the factory resulting in an environmental accident four years later.3M said that the health and safety of its workers and their families were "critical priorities" for the company.The factory in Gorseinon, Swansea, opened in 1952 and for decades was 3M's largest outside of the US. It employed more than 1,000 people from across south Wales to manufacture nappy fastenings and video tape.In 2023, 3M made the decision to close the factory and applied for planning permission to redevelop the site.BBC File on 4 Investigates discovered a land contamination report amongst hundreds of documents 3M submitted to the local council - it said the site is polluted with two toxic forever chemicals, PFOS and PFOA.The company never manufactured the chemicals, part of the PFAS family of substances, at the site. Its report said the chemicals came from "historic firefighting activities" using aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) - a type of firefighting foam.The BBC has tracked down those involved in firefighting on the site, who are speaking publicly for the first time.Every year, a dozen workers at the factory were selected to take on an additional responsibility as members of the "fire party" at the factory."We were on the emergency squad, like part-time firemen," said Ian (not his real name). He worked at the 3M factory for 40 years and was part of the fire party team."Once a month we did the training and we used to train putting out chemical fires," Ian added."They'd have a big tray full of chemicals, put a torch to it, set it up and then we used to use the light water then to put it out, it would come out like foam."Light water is the 3M product name for AFFF, with Ian saying workers were not told anything about chemicals it may contain. Levels of PFOS discovered in soil at the site in 2023 were listed in the report ranging from 50 to more than 1,500 micrograms per kilogram.These upper levels are 500 times greater than the average in British soils.Dr David Megson, an environmental scientist at Manchester Metropolitan University, told the BBC that these levels were a "cause for concern".In a commercial setting he said levels above 600 micrograms may pose a risk to human health because of inhalation of dust and contact with the skin.Members of the PFAS family of chemicals, specifically PFOA and PFOS, have been linked with a range of different adverse health conditions, Dr Megson said. He added: "[They] can cause damage to the liver, cardiovascular system, immune system and in the developing foetus."Both chemicals are now banned in the UK because they are toxic and do not break down easily in the environment. In 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) determined PFOA was carcinogenic and PFOS "possibly" carcinogenic to humans.But 3M knew as early as the 1970s of the health risks of these chemicals to workers.Bastiaan Slabbers/Getty ImagesSome firefighting foam used in Swansea contained toxic forever chemicals - this is a similar type of foam at a site in the US In 1999, a major civil claim was made against 3M after people started becoming unwell from water contaminated with PFOS and PFOA in the United States.During the case, internal 3M documents were released which showed the company recording elevated levels of PFAS in the blood of its workers and possible increases in cancer."[It] understood, going back many decades, the dangers of these chemicals," said Rob Bilott, partner at US firm Taft Law, who led that litigation."Animal studies started being done by [3M] in the 1960s that was showing incredible toxicity in multiple different animal species. "Rats, mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs, even monkeys were dropping dead by the late 1970s."Cheryl's father worked for decades at the factory in Swansea, starting back in the 70s, and was also on the fire party."He was the provider. He always worked hard. He was at his happiest when he was with his family and his friends," said Cheryl (not her real name).In his early 40s, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer and after treatment briefly returned to work before retiring at 50. A few years later the cancer returned and Cheryl's dad died at the age of 54.She said: "It was a shock because my father was always a big, strong man, so he was never ill. He never used to take time off sick from work."Many things can cause kidney cancer, but research compiled by the World Health Organization has concluded the risk of kidney cancer is probably increased by significant exposure to PFOS and PFOA.Dr Steve Hajioff is an epidemiologist and chairs an independent panel in Jersey looking into contamination of water supply by firefighting foam that also contains the chemicals manufactured by 3M.It was set up by the government after residents fell ill."I do not think you can ever say that [it] is impossible it might be caused or made more likely by PFAS exposure," he said. "But there are things where we can be pretty convinced, and those are things like kidney cancer, testicular cancer, less effective immunisations for children."Cheryl said she cannot understand why the company knew of the risks and failed to test the blood of workers, adding: "Maybe some people who have passed away could have been diagnosed earlier and had treatment earlier."This sentiment is echoed by Ian who said as the workers were never told of any risks, they did not wear breathing equipment and handled the foam in their factory overalls and wellies only."I'm not very happy about it," he said. "I've always said they were a bit blasé about all the chemicals they were really using."Ian also left the factory after being diagnosed with colon cancer after nearly four decades of service.We do not know if Ian's exposure to the foams caused this. The WHO said this year the evidence to link PFOS and PFOA to colon cancer remains unclear as there have not be enough cases identified.When litigation began in the US, 3M announced publicly that it would stop manufacturing PFOS and PFOA in the US, and globally by 2002.But BBC File on 4 Investigates found that even then workers in Swansea were not told of the health risks, and legacy foams were left on site.In October 2006, a major storm caused the system containing the foams to malfunction and release it on the site. At this point, it was just a liquid, and workers thinking it was rain water, pumped it into the aeration pond – used to store wastewater.John Bowers, the health and safety manager for the site at the time, said this suddenly created a serious problem."The aeration then created a huge amount of foam, which basically went from the pond basically up into the air," he said. Mr Bowers told the BBC the storm was so strong it blew the foam on to Gorseinon high street.He added: "It was described to me as if it was, excuse the phrase, like a foam party."Mr Bowers said the workers managed to contain the foam and the next day called 3M headquarters in Minnesota - it was only at this point the company told him the foam contained the toxic chemical PFOS."I found it surprising that 3M didn't contact existing customers to make them aware of the potential hazards and also even more surprising that they didn't contact the 3M facilities," he said. "I was disappointed."Rob Bilott has led legal action against 3M for decades over PFOS contamination in the USThe BBC submitted a freedom of information request to Swansea council and Natural Resources Wales, the environmental regulator, which revealed that this spill was not contained to the site but also contaminated a local waterway – Afon Lliw.Test results also released to the BBC show that PFOS levels in the pond were at 1800 ug/L and in the local river were at 20ug/L. Average levels above 0.00065ug/L in rivers and lakes are considered to be harmful to aquatic organisms – the levels in the river were 31,000 times higher than that.A local farmer was recorded as complaining to the council at the time after seeing foam in the river and raising concerns for her cattle.The company was warned by the regulator that it committed an offence under water regulations in force at the time, but was told it would not be prosecuted or fined.Mr Bowers told the BBC after this 2006 incident that the pond filled with contaminated foam on the site was cleaned and drained.But the planning application documents from 2023 say that the pond had filled back up and had very high levels of PFOS.The contamination report said the pond might "have the potential to act as an ongoing source to the water environment".In 2023, the pond's levels of PFOS were still at 21,000 times the recommended safe level for aquatic life.3M has now remediated the pond and surrounding soil again, which was completed in recent months.A 3M spokesperson told the BBC: "The health and safety of our employees, their families, and our communities, are critical priorities for 3M."It said it had long since phased PFOS and PFOA out of its operations and has permanently discontinued production of this firefighting foam.It told the BBC it would continue to deliver on its commitments – including remediating PFAS and collaborating with communities including by committing "to invest $1bn (£750m) globally in state-of-the-art water treatment technologies at sites where we have historically manufactured PFAS"."Over decades, 3M has shared significant information about PFAS, including by publishing many of its findings regarding PFAS in publicly available scientific journals," it added.Ian and Cheryl are not their real names. Because of their concerns about speaking publicly their names have been changed.

Chemicals
Animals
Health

Working to eliminate barriers to adopting nuclear energy

Nuclear waste continues to be a bottleneck in the widespread use of nuclear energy, so doctoral student Dauren Sarsenbayev is developing models to address the problem.

What if there were a way to solve one of the most significant obstacles to the use of nuclear energy — the disposal of high-level nuclear waste (HLW)? Dauren Sarsenbayev, a third-year doctoral student at the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), is addressing the challenge as part of his research.Sarsenbayev focuses on one of the primary problems related to HLW: decay heat released by radioactive waste. The basic premise of his solution is to extract the heat from spent fuel, which simultaneously takes care of two objectives: gaining more energy from an existing carbon-free resource while decreasing the challenges associated with storage and handling of HLW. “The value of carbon-free energy continues to rise each year, and we want to extract as much of it as possible,” Sarsenbayev explains.While the safe management and disposal of HLW has seen significant progress, there can be more creative ways to manage or take advantage of the waste. Such a move would be especially important for the public’s acceptance of nuclear energy. “We’re reframing the problem of nuclear waste, transforming it from a liability to an energy source,” Sarsenbayev says.The nuances of nuclearSarsenbayev had to do a bit of reframing himself in how he perceived nuclear energy. Growing up in Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan, the collective trauma of Soviet nuclear testing loomed large over the public consciousness. Not only does the country, once a part of the Soviet Union, carry the scars of nuclear weapon testing, Kazakhstan is the world’s largest producer of uranium. It’s hard to escape the collective psyche of such a legacy.At the same time, Sarsenbayev saw his native Almaty choking under heavy smog every winter, due to the burning of fossil fuels for heat. Determined to do his part to accelerate the process of decarbonization, Sarsenbayev gravitated to undergraduate studies in environmental engineering at Kazakh-German University. It was during this time that Sarsenbayev realized practically every energy source, even the promising renewable ones, came with challenges, and decided nuclear was the way to go for its reliable, low-carbon power. “I was exposed to air pollution from childhood; the horizon would be just black. The biggest incentive for me with nuclear power was that as long as we did it properly, people could breathe cleaner air,” Sarsenbayev says.Studying transport of radionuclidesPart of “doing nuclear properly” involves studying — and reliably predicting — the long-term behavior of radionuclides in geological repositories.Sarsenbayev discovered an interest in studying nuclear waste management during an internship at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a junior undergraduate student.While at Berkeley, Sarsenbayev focused on modeling the transport of radionuclides from the nuclear waste repository’s barrier system to the surrounding host rock. He discovered how to use the tools of the trade to predict long-term behavior. “As an undergrad, I was really fascinated by how far in the future something could be predicted. It’s kind of like foreseeing what future generations will encounter,” Sarsenbayev says.The timing of the Berkeley internship was fortuitous. It was at the laboratory that he worked with Haruko Murakami Wainwright, who was herself getting started at MIT NSE. (Wainwright is the Mitsui Career Development Professor in Contemporary Technology, and an assistant professor of NSE and of civil and environmental engineering).Looking to pursue graduate studies in the field of nuclear waste management, Sarsenbayev followed Wainwright to MIT, where he has further researched the modeling of radionuclide transport. He is the first author on a paper that details mechanisms to increase the robustness of models describing the transport of radionuclides. The work captures the complexity of interactions between engineered barrier components, including cement-based materials and clay barriers, the typical medium proposed for the storage and disposal of spent nuclear fuel.Sarsenbayev is pleased with the results of the model’s prediction, which closely mirrors experiments conducted at the Mont Terri research site in Switzerland, famous for studies in the interactions between cement and clay. “I was fortunate to work with Doctor Carl Steefel and Professor Christophe Tournassat, leading experts in computational geochemistry,” he says.Real-life transport mechanisms involve many physical and chemical processes, the complexities of which increase the size of the computational model dramatically. Reactive transport modeling — which combines the simulation of fluid flow, chemical reactions, and the transport of substances through subsurface media — has evolved significantly over the past few decades. However, running accurate simulations comes with trade-offs: The software can require days to weeks of computing time on high-performance clusters running in parallel.To arrive at results faster by saving on computing time, Sarsenbayev is developing a framework that integrates AI-based “surrogate models,” which train on simulated data and approximate the physical systems. The AI algorithms make predictions of radionuclide behavior faster and less computationally intensive than the traditional equivalent.Doctoral research focusSarsenbayev is using his modeling expertise in his primary doctoral work as well — in evaluating the potential of spent nuclear fuel as an anthropogenic geothermal energy source. “In fact, geothermal heat is largely due to the natural decay of radioisotopes in Earth’s crust, so using decay heat from spent fuel is conceptually similar,” he says. A canister of nuclear waste can generate, under conservative assumptions, the energy equivalent of 1,000 square meters (a little under a quarter of an acre) of solar panels.Because the potential for heat from a canister is significant — a typical one (depending on how long it was cooled in the spent fuel pool) has a temperature of around 150 degrees Celsius — but not enormous, extracting heat from this source makes use of a process called a binary cycle system. In such a system, heat is extracted indirectly: the canister warms a closed water loop, which in turn transfers that heat to a secondary low-boiling-point fluid that powers the turbine.Sarsenbayev’s work develops a conceptual model of a binary-cycle geothermal system powered by heat from high-level radioactive waste. Early modeling results have been published and look promising. While the potential for such energy extraction is at the proof-of-concept stage in modeling, Sarsenbayev is hopeful that it will find success when translated to practice. “Converting a liability into an energy source is what we want, and this solution delivers,” he says.Despite work being all-consuming — “I’m almost obsessed with and love my work” — Sarsenbayev finds time to write reflective poetry in both Kazakh, his native language, and Russian, which he learned growing up. He’s also enamored by astrophotography, taking pictures of celestial bodies. Finding the right night sky can be a challenge, but the canyons near his home in Almaty are an especially good fit. He goes on photography sessions whenever he visits home for the holidays, and his love for Almaty shines through. “Almaty means 'the place where apples originated.' This part of Central Asia is very beautiful; although we have environmental pollution, this is a place with a rich history,” Sarsenbayev says.Sarsenbayev is especially keen on finding ways to communicate both the arts and sciences to future generations. “Obviously, you have to be technically rigorous and get the modeling right, but you also have to understand and convey the broader picture of why you’re doing the work, what the end goal is,” he says. Through that lens, the impact of Sarsenbayev’s doctoral work is significant. The end goal? Removing the bottleneck for nuclear energy adoption by producing carbon-free power and ensuring the safe disposal of radioactive waste.

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