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Biden administration faces pressure to pick a side on plastics

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Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Environmental and industry groups are competing to win support for their pollution solutions.

Environmental and industry groups are competing to win support for their pollution solutions.

Environmental and industry groups are competing to win support for their pollution solutions.
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Effort to Curb Southern California Rail Yard Pollution Stalls Under Trump

The region’s rail yards continue to pose serious health hazards, prompting local advocates to push state leaders for action. The post Effort to Curb Southern California Rail Yard Pollution Stalls Under Trump appeared first on .

This story was supported by the Climate Equity Reporting Project and the Stakes Project at UC Berkeley School of Journalism. When MaCarmen Gonzalez moved from Mexico to the city of San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles, two decades ago, she brought one of her two sons with her. Soon after, he began suffering from asthma, while the son who remained in Mexico stayed healthy. The contrast convinced Gonzalez that the air in her new community — which had become a major distribution hub for Amazon and other online retailers — was making people sick. She began organizing with People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, a local environmental group, after seeing many of her friends fall ill with cancer — and in some cases — die from the disease. She attributed their illnesses to the unhealthy air.   Earlier this year, San Bernardino County — home to more than 2 million residents, the majority of whom are Latino — was ranked the nation’s worst for ozone pollution by the American Lung Association for the 15th consecutive year. “If you can’t leave, then you are stuck with the situation here, and you start to notice the health impacts building,” she said. “It often starts with allergies, and then it gets worse.” Over the last several years, Gonzalez and other community members have rallied residents to protest and testify at local regulatory hearings, pressing for tougher oversight of what’s known as the logistics industry. Their movement gained momentum when local air regulators began drafting rules aimed at cutting pollution from warehouses and Southern California’s two massive ports. MaCarmen Gonzalez with a group of environmental justice activists near the San Bernardino rail yard. Photo courtesy of People’s Collective for Environmental Justice. Last summer, organizers won a major victory when the South Coast Air Quality Management District agreed to regulate rail yards, an often-overlooked but heavily polluting corner of the shipping industry. Health studies going back nearly two decades have found elevated cancer risk in communities near rail yards, including the BNSF Railway intermodal facility in San Bernardino, as well as reduced lung function in children going to school nearby. The pollution that trains, trucks and other vehicles generate in rail yards don’t only pose health risks to local residents, they’re also a significant source of climate-warming emissions.  But just as air regulators were preparing to crack down on the pollution coming from the 25 rail yards in the region, the effort hit a wall — a new presidential administration hostile to  environmental regulation.  Consequently, the rule that the South Coast Air Quality Management District adopted last summer intended to make rail companies like BNSF and Union Pacific Railroad clean up their operations is now off the table. The rule would have required the companies to dramatically reduce the toxic emissions generated by their Southern California rail yards, make plans to add zero emissions infrastructure and replace some diesel-powered equipment with cleaner electric alternatives. It was a blow to communities like San Bernardino, where pollution from goods movement has grown alongside the rise in e-commerce. It also threw a wrench in one of the region’s more promising strategies for addressing the persistent, interconnected problems of climate change and air pollution. And it’s just one of many ways communities could suffer under the Trump administration’s broad-based attack on environmental regulations. For now, local residents in San Bernardino are looking to state officials to rein in air pollution in their communities. But they face steep opposition from rail companies and industry lobbying groups. *   *   * The Inland Empire, where Gonzalez lives, is a basin-shaped region that stretches east of Los Angeles County, and includes the cities of San Bernardino, Riverside and Ontario. The towering San Gabriel Mountains, which form the region’s backdrop, are often obscured by a layer of gray-brown haze laden with lung-damaging particulates and other pollutants that get trapped by the peaks and hang in the air. The pandemic hastened the expansion of Southern California’s shipping industry, but the warehouses began to replace farms in the area as far back as the 1980s. Their proliferation has led to sprawl at a massive scale and has attracted over 600,000 trucks a day to the region. They transport everything from clothing and shoes to appliances and home goods from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Numerous studies have shown that living near transportation corridors is associated with higher rates of heart disease and cancer, adverse birth outcomes, negative effects on the immune system and neurotoxicity. “It’s funny to think you could be going out to exercise, but you might actually be hurting yourself more than you’re helping,” said Gem Montes, another organizer with People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, who started a citizen science project focused on testing the air after realizing air pollution was hampering her ability to go outside. She worked with high school students who found high levels of air pollution in their school and homes.   Montes lives in Colton, known as the “hub city,” which is home to the Union Pacific West Colton yard, another major rail yard.  Rail yards are built to include dozens of parallel tracks used for storing, sorting, loading and unloading train cars and locomotives. They use retired diesel locomotives to move trains around the yards — engines that are more polluting than people typically see traveling around the state.  And the trucks that park at the rail yards often idle for hours at a time. And the pollution they generate is not just from their emissions. There is also noise. Residents living near rail yards hear the sound of metal gnashing against metal as freight trains pass by, moving products from warehouses to far-flung distribution centers. At all hours of the day, trucks loaded up with cargo rumble through Inland Empire communities, headed to nearby warehouses, including a 1-million-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center. *   *   * The rules championed by environmental and community groups to curb emissions from rail yards and other polluters were part of a creative strategy employed by local air regulators in recent years to work around restrictions on regulating cars, trains and trucks, which typically cross state lines, placing them primarily under federal jurisdiction. These so-called indirect source rules allow local regulators to target emissions generated by trains and vehicles that are associated with stationary facilities — such as warehouses, sports stadiums or, in this case, rail yards — that attract significant traffic. The South Coast Air Quality Management District’s first indirect source rule was aimed at cutting vehicle emissions directly connected to warehouses. It was adopted in 2021 and imposes environmental fees on warehouse owners, which they can offset by adding solar panels to their roofs, replacing diesel loading vehicles with electric ones, or providing chargers for electric trucks.  Then, last August, the AQMD adopted a similar rule for rail yards, and community members were cautiously optimistic.  The rule required BNSF and Union Pacific to cut smog-forming nitrogen oxide pollution at all 25 rail yards in the region — an 82% reduction by 2037 — and mandated that the rail operators plan to build charging and other infrastructure to support zero-emission operations. A row of shipping containers sit in a lot next to a San Bernardino neighborhood. Photo: Jeremy Lindenfeld. It would have been an incremental step toward broader electrification of the rail industry in the state — and it would have paved the way for Union Pacific and BNSF to electrify their freight handling equipment and add charging infrastructure to the rail yards. However, the rule was written to take effect only after the state passed two related laws aimed at cutting emissions in trucks and passenger trains. And the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the state regulator that partners with 35 regional air districts, withdrew both rules from the EPA process in January, shortly before Trump took office, in recognition that approval by the new administration was dead on arrival.   Two large railroad industry trade groups, the Association of American Railroads and the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association, had opposed the in-use Locomotive Regulation, which would have required train operators to begin transitioning their equipment to zero emissions. Both groups sued CARB in 2023 over the rule.  Neither BNSF nor Union Pacific responded to Capital & Main’s requests for comment.  *   *   * Now activists are hoping that the state can regulate the rail yard on its own — and state officials seem open to trying. This spring Rainbow Yeung, a spokesperson for AQMD, told Capital & Main that the agency was “continuing to discuss potential paths forward with CARB.” In March, Assemblymember Robert Garcia introduced Assembly Bill 914, which would have affirmed CARB’s authority to oversee indirect sources. But after it was amended, he placed it on hold, effectively killing it for the year. The nonprofit advocacy organization Earthjustice sponsored the bill alongside Garcia. Adrian Martinez, director of the organization’s Right To Zero campaign, says that the legislation will be reintroduced in early 2026.  A state-level rule targeting a range of “pollution magnets,” including rail yards, would be a novel step for California, which has been granted waivers by the EPA under both Republican and Democratic administrations that allow the state to go beyond federal air quality regulations. CARB listed the strategy in a recent set of recommendations to Gov. Gavin Newsom aimed at filling in the gaps left by the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the state’s climate policy. “With our clean air standards under attack by the Trump administration, it’s vital that California brings more tools to the table to clear smog,” said Martinez. The Supply Chain Federation, an industry lobbying group that fought against AB 914, has expressed concern about the potential shift toward a statewide rule targeting indirect pollution sources. The group “will continue to oppose similar proposals in the future,” said Sarah Wiltfong, chief public policy and advocacy officer for the federation in an email. The Supply Chain Federation released a report in July calling AQMD’s warehouse indirect source rule  “deeply flawed, economically harmful, and environmentally ineffective” and said it wants CARB’s other existing approaches to vehicle emissions standards to continue instead.   Andrea Vidaurre, co-founder of People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, feels optimistic about the potential for a state-level indirect source rule but added that it is not the only way forward.  “Rail yards are a huge source of air pollution, so if it’s not through [an indirect source rule], we’re asking what else California can do to make sure that it’s looking at [vehicle] idling limits, infrastructure upgrades, whatever it might need to do to have these places ready for [electric trains] — technology that exists everywhere else in the world but here.” And while electrifying trains and trucks would go a long way toward reducing pollution and cutting greenhouse gases, Vidaurre and her fellow advocates say that the larger issue of consumption — how much and how we buy — is the elephant in the room.  Even last fall, when it seemed all but guaranteed that the region would take an incremental step toward cleaning up its rail yards, she said the new regulations wouldn’t be a silver bullet.  “The problem is that we’re concentrating everything in one community,” said Vidaurre. “Forty percent of the nation’s imports move through these two ports.” But even if trucks and trains get electrified, she added, we still need fewer of them on the road. Copyright 2025 Capital & Main. Maison Tran is a UC Berkeley California Local News Fellow.

Pollution
Health
Climate

This Pennsylvania settlement could set the standard for preventing tiny plastic pellet pollution

A company agreed to install technology to watch for the tiny plastic pellets.

When Heather Hulton VanTassel went looking for plastic pellets in the Ohio River in 2021, she was simply trying to establish a baseline level of contamination. A new plastics facility was being constructed nearby, and she wanted to be able to compare the prevalence of pellets — known as “nurdles” — before and after it went into operation. The “before” number would probably be low, she thought. What she and her co-workers found, however, exceeded her expectations. “We were really shocked at the numbers we were seeing,” she told Grist.  VanTassel is the executive director of Three Rivers Waterkeeper, a nonprofit that protects the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers in southwestern Pennsylvania. As she and her team went about testing the river four years ago, hundreds of nurdles were coming up in each sample they pulled with their handheld trawls, a device about the size of a large shoebox. And the plastic pieces were tiny — even more so than the 5 millimeter nurdles she was used to. She had to add coffee filters to her catchment device to keep the particles from slipping through its sieves. VanTassel’s team kept following the pellets upstream, trawl after trawl, until they eventually reached the Ohio River’s confluence with Raccoon Creek, a popular area for swimming and fishing. That’s where they found the source. An industrial stormwater pipe was transporting pellets from a Styropek plastics facility and releasing them directly into the creek. The water testers could see them flowing out “all over the vegetation,” VanTassel said, and deposited in the soil just above the water line. That finding became the catalyst for a legal battle that has just reached its conclusion. Three Rivers Waterkeeper and the nonprofit PennEnvironment reached a landmark settlement agreement with Styropek earlier this month, following a lawsuit they filed against the company in 2023 over its contamination of the Ohio River watershed. The agreement, which also resolves a violation notice from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, requires Styropek to pay $2.6 million to remediate its plastic pollution, and to fund clean water projects across the state. But what makes the settlement effective, according to the plaintiffs, is not this initial penalty. It’s a requirement that Styropek must install technology to detect the release of any more plastic pellets from its facility in Monaca, Pennsylvania. If the technology finds even a single nurdle in the facility’s stormwater outfalls, the company will have to pay up.  David Masur, PennEnvironment’s executive director, said the agreement should become “a model and a blueprint” for regulators and the plastics industry. “I think they’ll have a hard time saying rationally why they shouldn’t do it [monitor their nurdle pollution] after a case like this, where the regulators and the industry are saying, ‘We agree it’s possible.’”  Nurdles are the precursors to plastic products. Manufacturers melt them down so they can be shaped into ink pens, disposable cups, or any number of other items. A water bottle, for context, is estimated to be made of about 1,000 nurdles. Styropek’s nurdles in Raccoon Creek were made of expandable polystyrene — a type of plastic that has been banned in many jurisdictions, due to its nonrecyclability and tendency to break into hazardous microplastics — destined to become things like packing peanuts, insulation for coolers, and foamy to-go containers. The company claims to be the largest expandable polystyrene producer “in the American continent.” Due to their tininess, ranging from the size of a pinhead to that of a nubbin on a Lego piece, nurdles are liable to escape into the environment. Spills often occur during transportation — these have been documented off the coasts of Sri Lanka, South Africa, Louisiana, and in many other places — but effluent from plastic production and processing facilities is also a significant pollution source.  Once in the environment, nurdles and the fragments that break off them may get eaten by birds and marine animals, causing plastic to accumulate up the food chain as larger critters eat smaller ones. Plastic particles are associated with a range of health problems in both humans and other animals, including heart disease and immune system dysfunction, though it’s not yet clear whether these are due to the leaching of plastics’ inherent chemical additives or the tendency of other pollutants to glom onto plastic particles, or perhaps some other factor. What’s the connection between plastics and climate change?Plastics are made from fossil fuels and cause greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of their lifespan, including during the extraction of oil and gas, during processing at petrochemical refineries, and upon disposal — especially if they’re incinerated. If the plastics industry were a country, it would have the world’s fourth-largest climate footprint, based on data published last year by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Research suggests that plastics are responsible for about 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. But this is likely an underestimate due to significant data gaps: Most countries lack greenhouse gas information on their plastics use and disposal, and the data that is available tends to focus on plastic production and specific disposal methods. Scientists are beginning to explore other ways plastics may contribute to climate change. Research suggests that plastics release greenhouse gases when exposed to UV radiation, which means there could be a large, underappreciated amount of climate pollution emanating from existing plastic products and litter. Marine microplastics may also be inhibiting the ocean’s ability to store carbon. And plastic particles in the air and on the Earth’s surface could be trapping heat or reflecting it — more research is needed.Holly Kaufman, a senior fellow at the nonprofit World Resources Institute, said it’s obvious that plastics are using up more than their fair share of the carbon budget, the amount of carbon dioxide the world can emit without surpassing 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius (2.7 or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. Plastics have “a major climate impact that has just not been incorporated anywhere,” she said — including the U.N.’s plastics treaty. In the U.S., companies that want to discharge wastewater or stormwater into public waterways have to get a special kind of permit from their state’s environmental protection agency, or the federal EPA. The permit describes the types and amounts of pollutants that are allowed to be released, and anything not included on this list may be considered a violation of the federal Clean Water Act. That formed the basis of PennEnvironment and Three Rivers Waterkeeper’s lawsuit: They argued that because Styropek’s permit didn’t say anything about nurdles, releasing them into Raccoon Creek was illegal. Part of the settlement agreement with Styropek, which is expected to be approved by the federal court for Western Pennsylvania, gives the company three years to eliminate nurdles from its stormwater outfalls, and up to two years to eliminate them from its wastewater outfalls. Should Styropek sell its facility to another company, those requirements will still apply — a crucial detail, since the company began winding down production at its Monaca facility earlier this year and reportedly plans to shut down completely in early 2026. While the facility idles, the consent decree only applies to its stormwater; the wastewater requirements will kick in if the facility resumes production.   Styropek declined to be interviewed for this story and instead sent a statement noting that it is “firmly committed to upholding the highest standards of safety, health, environmental protection, quality, and sustainability.” There are many ways of cleaning up stormwater and wastewater, and Styropek has already begun trialing a number of technologies, including “turbidity curtains” to trap suspended plastic in its wastewater lagoons and an iron coagulant to aggregate smaller plastic particles into larger ones. But different technology is required to know whether those interventions are actually working. Styropek’s settlement requires it to install monitoring tools that can detect nurdles down to the individual particle, and the company will incur a fine for each inspection where one is detected. For stormwater discharge, fines will increase if more than 10 pellets are detected. Until recently, this technology didn’t exist, at least not at an industrial scale. But a similar settlement that an environmental group and private citizen reached six years ago with the Taiwanese company Formosa Plastics, whose Port Lavaca, Texas, facility was caught releasing tens of millions of nurdles into the Gulf of Mexico, set a helpful precedent. The settlement required the facility to install novel technology to its wastewater outflows, capable of detecting not only nurdles and other microplastics but also plastic powder.  Aiza José-Sánchez, president of the company Aizaco Environmental Engineering, designed that technology. She declined to say whether she’s been approached about the Styropek settlement, but she told Grist she’s made significant updates to her equipment with an eye toward installing it at other plastics facilities.  With Formosa, Aizaco’s monitoring system is installed above an underground wastewater pipeline roughly 2 miles away from the actual plastic production facility. This is so independent auditors can access it without having to enter the facility. Aizaco disinterred part of the underground pipe and connected it to a series of detectors, which could flag samples of water that might contain plastics. One of them sensed if the water was suspiciously turbid, or cloudy. Another used filters to catch particles above a certain size, and workers onsite were also keeping watch for signs of plastic contamination. Flagged samples would be tested using chromatography, a technique that separates dissolved substances out of a mixture, to confirm whether their pollutants really were plastic. Aizaco designed tools to detect nurdles in companies’ outflows. Courtesy of Aizaco An Aizaco employee holds a nurdle detected by the company’s technology. Courtesy of Aizaco The system works “100 percent of the time,” José-Sánchez said. Every inspection — meaning at least three times a week, per Formosa’s consent decree — has turned up plastic pollution, she told Grist. Her company’s testing has resulted in millions of dollars of fines for Formosa. Masur, with PennEnvironment, said the requirement of monitoring technology — supported by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection — was what made their settlement agreement such a “landmark,” more so than the $2.6 million penalty. He said he’s hoping to reinforce the precedent set in the Formosa case, which proved that it’s possible for plastic producers to set a goal of “no plastic discharges,” and then monitor their own facilities to see if they’re achieving it. “We wanted this to be the standard under the Clean Water Act,” said Matthew Dononhue, a senior attorney at the nonprofit National Environmental Law Center, who led the complaint against Styropek.  Donohue and Masur said they couldn’t divulge whether other environmental groups were looking into their own lawsuits to demand continuous monitoring at plastics facilities. But they offered another potential path forward. Facilities with water pollution permits under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System have to renew their permits every five years — and when they do, the public gets a chance to give input. If enough people advocated for it, state environmental protection agencies or the federal EPA could revise facilities’ permits to include a monitoring requirement.  “As the facilities in our state have their permits come up for a renewal, we should just be taking this and dropping it right in,” Masur said. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This Pennsylvania settlement could set the standard for preventing tiny plastic pellet pollution on Sep 16, 2025.

Pollution
Technology
Chemicals

Conservationists Fight to Save Nigeria's Sea Turtles From Pollution and Poachers

By Sodiq Adelakun and Ben EzeamaluLAGOS (Reuters) -Plastic pollution, discarded fishing nets and coastal development are taking a heavy toll on...

By Sodiq Adelakun and Ben EzeamaluLAGOS (Reuters) -Plastic pollution, discarded fishing nets and coastal development are taking a heavy toll on Nigeria's sea turtles, say conservationists battling to save them."We're seeing a drastic decline," said Chinedu Mogbo, founder of the Greenfingers Wildlife Conservation Initiative, which has rescued and released more than 70 turtles over the last five years after treating them at its turtle sanctuary.At least five endangered or threatened sea turtle species inhabit Nigeria's waters, but exact numbers are not known and resources for monitoring are inadequate, Mogbo said. His team has rescued Olive Ridley, Hawksbill and Leatherback turtles.Mostly self-funded, Mogbo's group has been working with local fishermen to save the animals."Fishers need income. We offer net repair kits in exchange for rescued turtles or protected nests," he told Reuters at the group's turtle sanctuary in the coastal city of Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital.But with no marine protected areas and shrinking nesting grounds, the coastline has become a trap for turtles, Mogbo said, calling for state authorities to do more to protect them.Nigeria's environmental agency did not respond to requests for comment.An additional threat to sea turtles comes from brisk demand for their meat, shells and eggs in Nigeria, both for consumption and traditional ritual uses."We eat their eggs and sometimes give them to the village elders for voodoo," said Morifat Hassan, who sells fish in the coastal area of Folu on the outskirts of Lagos. Sea turtles fetch up to 90,000 naira ($60) each, Hassan said.In July, rescuers saved a huge green turtle in the Folu area that was injured after getting tangled in a fishing net. They have named him Moruf.After negotiating with the fishermen who found Moruf, Mogbo was able to fend off people trying to buy the injured turtle."Normally, this turtle would be butchered or sold, but we intervened and will ensure it is returned safely to the sea," Mogbo said as he stood on the shoreline.(Writing by Ben Ezeamalu;Additional Reporting by Kazeem Sanni;Editing by Helen Popper)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Pollution
Conservation
Water

‘It’s dying in front of our eyes’: how the UK’s largest lake became an ecological disaster

Signs tout a natural paradise, but pollution from over-farming has left Northern Ireland’s Lough Neagh choked by toxic algaeThe bright, cheery signs dot the shoreline like epistles from another era, a time before the calamity.“Ballyronan marina is a picturesque boating and tourist facility on the shores of Lough Neagh,” says one. “Contours of its historical past embrace the virginal shoreline.” Continue reading...

The bright, cheery signs dot the shoreline like epistles from another era, a time before the calamity.“Ballyronan marina is a picturesque boating and tourist facility on the shores of Lough Neagh,” says one. “Contours of its historical past embrace the virginal shoreline.”Another sign boasts that the “rich ecological diversity and abundance of salmon and eels” has sustained communities there for thousands of years, since the stone age.A roadside billboard declares the Lough Neagh Fishermen’s Cooperative Society to be Europe’s biggest producer of wild eels. Yet another sign tells visitors that this majestic landscape of water and sky inspired Seamus Heaney’s Nobel-winning poetry.People feed ducks and sea gulls on the algae-covered shores of the lake. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP/Getty ImagesBeauty, ecology, heritage, tourism, fishing – the UK’s biggest lake, sitting in the heart of Northern Ireland, had bragging rights to fill a hundred signs. But now they line the shoreline as testaments to hubris because of an environmental disaster.The 400 sq km (150 sq mile) freshwater lough is choking on recurring toxic algal blooms that coat the surface, kill wildlife, unleash stenches and make the lake all but unusable. Eel fishing has been suspended and tourists have fled.The lough and surrounding watercourses are on course to record their worst year, with at least 171 detections of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) growths, according to a government pollution tracker. The algae’s return was a “distressing but timely reminder of the need to urgently turn the tide on the ecological crisis”, Northern Ireland’s environment minister, Andrew Muir, said in a statement.The algae on Lough Neagh forms patterns and swirls said to be reminiscent of works by Gustav Klimt. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP/Getty ImagesThe main cause is an overload of phosphorus and nitrogen from agriculture, including farm runoff, fertilisers and animal waste. Inadequate wastewater treatment facilities and septic tank leakage aggravate the problems. Additional factors are sand extraction, warming water and proliferating zebra mussels, an invasive species.The Stormont executive agreed a rescue plan last year but has balked at reining in polluters, prompting condemnation from Claire Hanna, leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party: “Lough Neagh is dying in front of our eyes. Images of fish and eels gasping for life on the surface are not just shocking – they are a stark warning of total ecological collapse.”This week an activist, Bea Shrewsbury, attempted to present a “Lough Neagh smoothie”, drawn from the lake, to assembly members at Stormont. Police escorted her away.The lough supplies 40% of Northern Ireland’s drinking water, which is treated and said to be safe. Not everyone is convinced. “I’ve not drunk from the tap in a year,” said Brigid Laverty, 67, who lives by the lake. This week the Food Standards Agency said toxins have been found in the flesh of some fish for the first time but that commercially harvested fish remained safe to eat.A sign by Lough Neagh extols the lake’s history and ecology. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The GuardianThe water should be light brown but has turned green, said Peter Harper, an environmental officer with the Lough Neagh Partnership, a nonprofit group. In some places the sludge – so widespread it is visible from space – forms mosaic-type patterns and swirls redolent of Gustav Klimt, said Harper. “It can be weirdly beautiful.”The impact on wildlife is incalculable, making the tourism-themed shoreline signs a grim joke. “What lies beneath?” says one. “A world of ancient history and astounding myths is waiting just below the surface. What unique creatures have made the lough their home?”skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionAnother sign exhorts visitors: “This special place deserves respect … please keep dogs on leads.” It urges swimmers to be careful because conditions can change fast. But there are no swimmers, and virtually no boats, because there is no demand and algae clogs engines.A buildup of algae at Toome lock at the north end of Lough Neagh. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The GuardianA more recent sign, tacked to a lamp-post at Ballyronan marina, is more up to date: “Spotted a dead wild bird? Use the DAERA dead wild bird reporting tool service if you find dead gulls, waders, ducks or swans.”DAERA is the department of agriculture, environment and rural affairs – a bureaucracy that critics say prioritised the farms and agrifood companies that expanded pig, chicken and cattle numbers in the past decade and overloaded the soil’s ability to absorb nutrients. They did so with official blessing in a “going for growth” strategy.“It was not thought through,” said Gerry Darby, the manager of the Lough Neagh Partnership. “I’ll put it another way. The guy who did the calculations about nutrient levels knew fuck all about fuck all.”Gerry Darby of the Lough Neagh Partnership. He said the lake could die unless action is taken to clean it up. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The GuardianMuir, of the Alliance party, said his department had completed or made good progress on most of the 37 points in an action plan agreed last year, but said Stormont faced “difficult decisions” over key measures. Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party, who dominate the executive, appear to have stalled the nutrients action programme over fears of a farmer backlash.Darby said there was no magical solution, only trade-offs, but still expressed confidence that politicians would take the necessary measures. “The lake is not dead,” he said. “It could be dead if things continue as they are.”

Pollution
Activism
Animals

US pollution measurement practices raise questions about reliability of data

Guardian analysis heightens concerns on whether the air around many large factories is, or will be, safe to breatheA Guardian analysis has raised fresh questions over the way regulators and corporations measure the air quality impact of planned factories that risk emitting dangerous levels of pollution.Between 2014 and 2024, air pollution permit applications in Michigan – designed to gauge if proposed industrial projects would cause regions to violate federal pollution limits – did not meet data collection rules or best practices over 90% of the time. Some measurements were taken more than a hundred miles away from sites. Continue reading...

A Guardian analysis has raised fresh questions over the way regulators and corporations measure the air quality impact of planned factories that risk emitting dangerous levels of pollution.Between 2014 and 2024, air pollution permit applications in Michigan – designed to gauge if proposed industrial projects would cause regions to violate federal pollution limits – did not meet data collection rules or best practices over 90% of the time. Some measurements were taken more than a hundred miles away from sites.The findings are likely to heighten concerns around whether the air around many large factories is, or will be, safe to breathe. Public health advocates and environmental attorneys have long claimed readings are manipulated in a bid to push through planned sites – and warned that practices uncovered in Michigan were not unique. The safety of air around many of the nation’s factories is similarly unclear.Among the facilities is a Stellantis auto plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, a large Detroit suburb. In 2016, Michigan environmental regulators approved a permit application allowing then-FCA Chrysler to increase particulate matter emissions.The projected level of new particulate matter combined with current levels around the plant would not violate federal limits, FCA claimed: the air would remain safe.But the air monitor FCA used to arrive at that conclusion was 17 miles to the north in New Haven, a largely rural community with cleaner air than Sterling Heights. FCA and regulators ignored two closer monitors in urban areas with dirtier airsheds that more closely matched that of Sterling Heights. Per Clean Air Act best practices, FCA should have installed an air monitor at its plant to determine the levels.It did not. No one knows how much dangerous particulate matter hangs in the region around the Sterling Heights plant. Stellantis did not respond to a request for comment.“It’s an abuse to say ‘Oh yeah, that’s good enough,’ because you didn’t look,” said Seth Johnson, an attorney with the Earthjustice non-profit who has litigated on permitting issues. “If you don’t care about what people in an area are breathing then you don’t want to look.”In some cases, air quality data is used from monitors hundreds of miles away. In other instances, no data is collected when the law requires it to be. Sometimes companies ignore nearby monitors and use data from a monitor further away, where the air is cleaner, as FCA did.The types of facilities that apply for permits include major polluters like power plants, auto factories and other heavy industry sites. When the Swedish paper giant Billerud wanted to expand its Escanaba, Michigan, mill in 2023, it used readings for nitrogen dioxide from a monitor about 150 miles south-east, in Houghton Lake, Michigan. Its particulate matter readings came from monitors about 130 miles west in Potawatomi, Wisconsin.The Lansing Board of Water and Light, meanwhile, relied on carbon monoxide data from a monitor in Grand Rapids, about 68 miles away, when it wanted to expand a power plant.Neither monitored onsite for the pollutants. Billerud and Lansing Board of Water did not respond to requests for comment.The Michigan department of environment, Great Lakes and energy (EGLE) said the agency “does not deliberately choose a monitor” that makes it appear as if pollution levels are lower than they are. Using the Billerud example, a spokesperson said the airsheds in Houghton and Potawatomi were similar enough to Escanaba to draw conclusions about the safety of the air in Escanaba.“In this case and many others like it, using monitors farther away is a better and more conservative way to evaluate an applicant’s request,” an EGLE spokesperson, Josef Greenberg, said in a statement.However, Potawatomi is in a state forest, and Houghton is similarly more rural in character than Escanaba. That prompts questions about the accuracy of EGLE’s claim, said Nick Leonard, a lawyer with the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, which has sued Michigan regulators over some permit approvals. Such scenarios should trigger onsite monitoring, he said.“You’d think it’s a technocratic process, but it’s not,” Leonard said. “Companies seeking a permit more or less tell EGLE what data they want to use, and EGLE rubber-stamps it every time. They never do a meaningful assessment of the data, and they never require permit applicants to do onsite monitoring even though that is an option under the Clean Air Act and encouraged by EPA [the Environmental Protection Agency].”‘Real impacts on real people’The Guardian obtained major Michigan air pollution permit applications for 2014 to 2024 via Freedom of Information Act (Foia) requests. The permit applications were submitted during the administrations of the former Republican governor Rick Snyder and the current Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.The Clean Air Act states companies must obtain a permit to emit air pollutants covered by National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), such as particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide.The EPA sets limits for the pollutants, which are linked to lung disease, cancer and a range of other health problems. The Clean Air Act also states that permit applicants must demonstrate that “emissions from construction or operation of such a facility will not cause, or contribute to, air pollution in excess of any” NAAQS limit.Best practices state that applicants should demonstrate their projects will not violate limits by adding local air monitors’ ambient pollution levels to their projected emissions. State environmental regulators most often handle the permit requests.EPA rules and best practices around air monitors call for state agencies to require companies to use data from a monitor within about six miles. If a monitor is not available, a “regional” monitor further away can be used, but conditions in the two locations’ airsheds should be similar.That option should be used sparingly, the best practices state. If no comparable air monitors are available, then a company should install a monitor onsite and check the air for a year.That virtually never happens in Michigan or elsewhere, said Michael Koerber, a retired deputy director of the EPA’s Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, which worked with EGLE and other states on air permitting. “Do projects generally do that? I can’t think of too many that really did,” he added.EGLE said in a statement it rarely required onsite monitoring, but noted that it regularly consulted with the EPA on the decisions, and the EPA also has not felt that onsite monitoring was required.If a company’s projected emissions violate the NAAQS limits, they could be required to take any number of steps, like putting in better pollution controls, or reducing pollution at a different facility. But that rarely happens, public health advocates say.“It’s easy to get lost in the arcane details of all of this, but at the end of the day we’re talking about pollution that is really bad for people. And it has real impacts on real people,” Johnson said.‘Business as usual’The air in south-west Detroit near Zug Island is among the dirtiest in the nation, filled with pollutants from steelmakers, automakers and others who operate factories in the dense industrial zone.By 2023, the level of toxic particulate matter there was on the brink of violating federal air quality limits, and the concrete producer Edward C Levy Co applied to add more from a proposed slag grinding facility.The problem: the particulate matter that Levy’s facility would emit would cause the region to be in violation of federal limits for the pollutant, data from the application and a state air quality monitor positioned about 0.65 miles from the site showed.Still, the state approved the permit in late 2023. It and Levy ignored data from the nearby monitor, instead using readings from a monitor six miles away in Allen Park, where the air is cleaner. That made it appear as if Levy would not cause a violation.EGLE’s decision was “business as usual”, said Theresa Landrum, who lives in south-west Detroit. The firm’s founder, Edward Levy, is politically connected and a prolific campaign donor, and EGLE, “doesn’t seem that EGLE is working on behalf of the people”, Landrum said. Levy did not respond to a request for comment.EGLE at the time defended its decision, claiming it used modeling to show there would not be a violation. Leonard’s law firm has sued, and the case is currently in a state appeals court after a lower court judge ruled there was no violation.Leonard said he had never seen the EPA or EGLE show data to support its decisions, and their approach varies from permit to permit.“Sometimes they use the closest monitor, sometimes not,” he said. “Sometimes they use a monitor from an area that typically has high levels of air pollution, sometimes not. Sometimes they use a monitor upwind of the facility, sometimes they use one that is downwind.“The lack of criteria and variability from permit to permit makes this fertile ground for manipulation.”Leonard pointed to a 2018 application to increase sulfur dioxide emissions at the Arbor Hills landfill in Northville Township, a suburb at the western edge of Detroit’s metro area. It pulled air quality data from Allen Park, about 22 miles away. EGLE approved the permit.Leonard said EGLE in part justified the use of the Allen Park monitor because it classified the new project as a “single source” of pollution, or in effect the only major source of air emissions in the area. But EPA records show 164 other companies in a 10-mile radius have such high emission levels that they must report to the EPA.Currently, no one knows if the pollution from Arbor Hills’ expansion combined with the pollution from the other major sources has made Northville Township’s air unsafe.Leonard said he had pushed EGLE to do more onsite monitoring. “They look at me like I’m crazy if I even suggest it,” he claimed.Arbor Hills Energy LLC, the landfill’s former owner, and Opal Fuels its current owner, did not respond to requests for comment.The EPAThe blame lies with the EPA and state regulators, advocates say. The EPA “doesn’t like” the pre-construction monitoring and data requirements, and “has fought against it for 40 years”, Johnson of Earthjustice, said.The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.The agency in the late 1970s issued a rule under the Clean Air Act that did not require companies to provide air quality monitoring data to show their project would not violate federal limits. Earthjustice and Sierra Club sued, arguing the law explicitly called for data, and in 2013 a federal court agreed.But the EPA did not begin requiring meaningful data, Johnson added. Instead, it started “doing this run around” in which it allowed existing data to be pulled from monitors up to hundreds of miles away that often does not provide a clear picture of air pollution around the proposed facilities.The law, however, is less clear about how companies must demonstrate compliance with the limits. State agencies, with EPA approval, are essentially exploiting those gray areas or non-enforceable best practices, Johnson said.Michigan could do more, too, Leonard said. Whitmer has promoted herself as an environmental justice (EJ) leader, taking steps such as creating state panels that advise on such issues. But when it comes to decisions that will truly protect communities, like permitting, she typically puts the industry’s needs first, according to Leonard.That hasn’t gone unnoticed in south-west Detroit, Landrum said: “Whitmer hasn’t stepped out on EJ issues. She puts corporate profits over people.”Whitmer’s office did not respond to a request for comment.‘A matter of priorities’In Monroe, Michigan, the Gerdau Steel plant is spitting high levels of nitrogen dioxide into the air. In an apparent direct violation of the Clean Air Act, no data was provided to determine if it violated the NAAQS.Gerdau Steel did not respond to a request for comment.Public health advocates say it doesn’t need to be this way. Part of the problem is the low number of air quality monitors. Michigan has in place just 30 PM2.5 monitors to cover its approximately 97,000 sq miles, making it rare for a monitor to be within six miles of a proposed project.Though the 2021 Inflation Reduction Act provided funding for air quality monitors, Michigan didn’t expand its network. Johnson said advances in satellite and mobile air monitoring could make it easier to gather data around a facility.EGLE in its statement said onsite monitoring was costly and time intensive. But former EPA official Koerber noted the projects often take years to plan, so monitoring onsite for a year is a relatively inexpensive and easy step for companies to take. He also said firms could do post-construction monitoring, so the public knows for sure whether there is a problem.The fixes aren’t that difficult, according to Johnson. It’s “just a matter of priorities”, he said. “People have the right to know what they’re breathing and what they’re going to breathe in the future. To deprive people of that right is anti-democratic.”

Pollution
Business
Energy

Suggested Viewing

A Community, Fighting

This short film marks the 20 year campaign sparked by the news that a waste company had arrived armed with plans to build a large hazardous waste incinerator at the end of a then undeveloped cul-de-sac in Ringaskiddy, the industrial heartland of Cork. As news percolated around Cork Harbour, concern and opposition, evident from the outset, consolidated, galvanised and continued to go from strength to strength over the course of the years that saw a community stuck in a battle that they didn’t invite. The campaign, at the time of completion of this film, is still ongoing. This film is a visual representation of the time that has passed - from protests, to fundraisers, to court battles, at the heart of it a community subject to much struggle. However, they have not let that stop them and have truly shown the strength in numbers and staying power.

Activism
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This Mortal Plastik

A personal dive into the world’s most impersonal substance: plastics. Amid the lockdown, a bereaved mother unfolds a surprising journey within and across oceans to understand the contemporary landscape of single-use synthetics. From the noble intentions behind its invention to scales of havoc it has wrought, this experimental documentary brings together art, history, science, and the everyday. Playfully crafted with hand-drawn illustrations and poetic interludes, this evocative “pause between deep time and no time” will change how you think about this ordinary “thing without thingness."

Animation
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Waterbackpack PAUL

The world is a paradise but more and more natural and manmade disasters happen. A German professor and his students invent a tiny but ingenious bag to clean polluted water after environmental catastrophes without chemicals and electricity to save people's life.

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Let There be Light

Genesis 1:3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Taiwan was founded on agriculture in the early days. However, in the face of rapid urbanization, there was no time to build infrastructure such as sewage pipelines, and a large amount of sewage was discharged indiscriminately, causing severe water pollution. To connect domestic sewage to the water purification plant and turn it into water resources that can be continuously recycled, the sewage engineering team adopted a most humane "equation" to appease and compensate the residents disturbed by the project. They invited the residents to participate in the beautification design of the back alley, which was damaged by the engineering project, and hired old painters who have painted "Roman Holiday" and "Back to the Future" movie billboards, and new generation painters to create with colorful brushes. The colorful paintings make the originally dark, dirty, and smelly back alleys clean and bright, and people are more willing to enter the back alleys to make tea and chat, a secret paradise for locals is then created. Let’s walk into the back alleys and see how the light makers light up the back alleys with human touch and let the light penetrate the water, creating Formosa’s unique “Light Making Equation”. This action has been carried out since 2016 and will continue in the future.

Water
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Pollution

The Story of Lumshnong

"The Story of Lumshnong" by Aarti Srivastava highlights ‘mindless’ limestone mining by cement companies. Lumshnong is a village situated in the Jaintia Hills district of Meghalaya, India, which is rich in reserves of limestone. These rich reserves of limestone have attracted cement companies to set up their plants in the village, thus creating a hazardous environment for the local population. The documentary talks about “unthinkable stupidity of the cement companies”. There are as many as eight cement plants in a radius of just five kilometres in Lumshnong village. Limestone mining, as claimed in the documentary, has turned the Lumshnong village into a “dusty, waterless and barren” piece of land. “Studies revealed that loss of forest cover, pollution of water, soil and air, depletion of natural flora and fauna, reduction in biodiversity, erosion of soil, and degradation of agriculture land are some are some of the hazards of limestone mining,” the makers of the documentary stated. They added: “The hazards will not just be limited to the areas around the mines and cement factories but will spill to other regions if environmental checks are not put in place. It will also affect the lives of the people who live around the area.” The visuals of cement plants in the foreground, while the vegetations begins to look grey, and locals pointing at the shortcomings of limestone mining paint a sordid and truthful picture of what is happening in Lumshnong.

Resources
Pollution
Documentary

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