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Opinion: Collaboration, not litigation, can support both salmon and hydropower

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Sunday, September 21, 2025

Scott SimmsFor The Oregonian/OregonLiveSimms is chief executive officer and executive director of the Public Power Council, which represents more than 80 nonprofit, community owned electric utilities across six Pacific Northwest states, including Oregon.A recent op-ed by Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association’s Liz Hamilton left some key facts out of the conversation about our region’s salmon and our hydropower system (“Back to court, but our regional work to protect salmon will continue,” Sept. 14). It’s true that a coalition of fishing and special interest groups, the states of Oregon and Washington and four Lower Columbia River Treaty tribes requested a federal judge lift a stay in decades-old litigation over how to manage the Columbia Basin. We have long been in conflict with those who believe that dismantling dams on the Lower Snake River – which produce reliable hydropower for the region – is essential to protecting salmon. However, we do not believe that conflict is necessary. Rather, we believe now is the time for the region to focus on shared goals of restoring fish while maintaining an adequate and affordable power system. Instead of endless litigation, we can strengthen programs that protect sensitive environmental areas, improve habitat and deploy new technologies that help fish pass safely through dams. Although there are significant disagreements that will require negotiation, we can make progress more quickly through collaboration than litigation. And there have already been gains. Since Bonneville Dam first began operating in 1938, the number of returning adult salmon and steelhead has tripled, according to fish counts from dams across the Columbia River basin compiled by the University of Washington’s Data Access in Real Time system. While there’s still a lot of work ahead to continue strengthening certain runs, we are witnessing fish populations bouncing back, even with dams in place.At the same time as these fish returns are improving, the states of Oregon and Washington have expanded non-tribal salmon fishing seasons for sport and commercial operations. Fishing groups don’t mention this when they advocate for severely hobbling or demolishing the region’s hydro projects. But the impact of sport and commercial fishing on salmon should not be ignored in a comprehensive discussion about how to protect fish populations. As recently as this month, Oregon and Washington fisheries managers approved an extension of commercial gillnetting operations in the Columbia River. The practice of commercial gillnetting – in which massive nets extend up to 1,500 feet into the river – is so effective at ensnaring all types of fish, endangered or not, that critics have repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, sought to ban its use. These efforts are in addition to the offshore commercial harvests that happen when trawlers cruise the international waters off our region’s shores, hauling out salmon and other species by the ton every year. These salmon never make it back to their spawning grounds, nor, importantly, to the historic fishing areas where the region’s tribes have rights under U.S. treaties.Meanwhile, the same groups advocating for a return to the courtroom also do not acknowledge the critically important role our region’s clean, renewable hydro system plays in powering homes and businesses and funding salmon recovery efforts. In the heat dome that gripped the Northwest in 2021 and the massive cold snap that hit us in 2024, the hydropower generated by dams was the single largest source of electricity fueling the Northwest, based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration Hourly Grid Monitor. These are two extreme events that, because of a changing climate and an increase in electricity dependency, will stress our system even more in the future. Hydropower has long been the backbone of our region’s energy system, and it will be even more critical in the next decade, as electricity consumption is forecast to grow by more than 30%. While many understand that hydro powers our communities and our modern lives, few are aware that the system also funds one of the world’s largest fish and wildlife mitigation programs in the world. The region’s nonprofit electric utilities, which buy their power from the federal Bonneville Power Administration, have collectively paid more than $715 million annually from 2013 to 2023 to fund hatcheries, habitat improvements, predation management and other actions.The op-ed dismisses a 2020 plan for Columbia River operations as putting the needs of salmon last. But that plan, developed over a course of years under both Republican and Democratic administrations, helped deliver a banner year for salmon returns to the region in 2024, while also ensuring a strong hydropower supply that carried us through extreme weather events. This plan set out to balance of the needs in the basin – without breaching dams that coalition members use as a cornerstone for their advocacy.We live in a region where both salmon and hydropower production can and do co-exist. Failing to find a path forward that supports both is such a missed opportunity for everyone who calls the Northwest their home. We in Northwest public power stand ready to avoid a return to the courtroom and to sit down with litigants to do the hard work of collaborating on a solution. We remain hopeful that the coalition groups will join us. Share your opinion Submit your essay of 600-700 words on a highly topical issue or a theme of particular relevance to the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and the Portland area to commentary@oregonian.com. No attachments, please. Please include your email and phone number for verification. If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

We live in a region where both salmon and hydropower production can and do co-exist, writes Scott Simms of the Public Power Council. Failing to find a path forward that supports both is a missed opportunity for everyone who calls the Northwest their home.

Scott Simms

For The Oregonian/OregonLive

Simms is chief executive officer and executive director of the Public Power Council, which represents more than 80 nonprofit, community owned electric utilities across six Pacific Northwest states, including Oregon.

A recent op-ed by Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association’s Liz Hamilton left some key facts out of the conversation about our region’s salmon and our hydropower system (“Back to court, but our regional work to protect salmon will continue,” Sept. 14).

It’s true that a coalition of fishing and special interest groups, the states of Oregon and Washington and four Lower Columbia River Treaty tribes requested a federal judge lift a stay in decades-old litigation over how to manage the Columbia Basin. We have long been in conflict with those who believe that dismantling dams on the Lower Snake River – which produce reliable hydropower for the region – is essential to protecting salmon.

However, we do not believe that conflict is necessary. Rather, we believe now is the time for the region to focus on shared goals of restoring fish while maintaining an adequate and affordable power system. Instead of endless litigation, we can strengthen programs that protect sensitive environmental areas, improve habitat and deploy new technologies that help fish pass safely through dams. Although there are significant disagreements that will require negotiation, we can make progress more quickly through collaboration than litigation.

And there have already been gains. Since Bonneville Dam first began operating in 1938, the number of returning adult salmon and steelhead has tripled, according to fish counts from dams across the Columbia River basin compiled by the University of Washington’s Data Access in Real Time system. While there’s still a lot of work ahead to continue strengthening certain runs, we are witnessing fish populations bouncing back, even with dams in place.

At the same time as these fish returns are improving, the states of Oregon and Washington have expanded non-tribal salmon fishing seasons for sport and commercial operations. Fishing groups don’t mention this when they advocate for severely hobbling or demolishing the region’s hydro projects.

But the impact of sport and commercial fishing on salmon should not be ignored in a comprehensive discussion about how to protect fish populations. As recently as this month, Oregon and Washington fisheries managers approved an extension of commercial gillnetting operations in the Columbia River. The practice of commercial gillnetting – in which massive nets extend up to 1,500 feet into the river – is so effective at ensnaring all types of fish, endangered or not, that critics have repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, sought to ban its use. These efforts are in addition to the offshore commercial harvests that happen when trawlers cruise the international waters off our region’s shores, hauling out salmon and other species by the ton every year. These salmon never make it back to their spawning grounds, nor, importantly, to the historic fishing areas where the region’s tribes have rights under U.S. treaties.

Meanwhile, the same groups advocating for a return to the courtroom also do not acknowledge the critically important role our region’s clean, renewable hydro system plays in powering homes and businesses and funding salmon recovery efforts.

In the heat dome that gripped the Northwest in 2021 and the massive cold snap that hit us in 2024, the hydropower generated by dams was the single largest source of electricity fueling the Northwest, based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration Hourly Grid Monitor. These are two extreme events that, because of a changing climate and an increase in electricity dependency, will stress our system even more in the future. Hydropower has long been the backbone of our region’s energy system, and it will be even more critical in the next decade, as electricity consumption is forecast to grow by more than 30%.

While many understand that hydro powers our communities and our modern lives, few are aware that the system also funds one of the world’s largest fish and wildlife mitigation programs in the world. The region’s nonprofit electric utilities, which buy their power from the federal Bonneville Power Administration, have collectively paid more than $715 million annually from 2013 to 2023 to fund hatcheries, habitat improvements, predation management and other actions.

The op-ed dismisses a 2020 plan for Columbia River operations as putting the needs of salmon last. But that plan, developed over a course of years under both Republican and Democratic administrations, helped deliver a banner year for salmon returns to the region in 2024, while also ensuring a strong hydropower supply that carried us through extreme weather events. This plan set out to balance of the needs in the basin – without breaching dams that coalition members use as a cornerstone for their advocacy.

We live in a region where both salmon and hydropower production can and do co-exist. Failing to find a path forward that supports both is such a missed opportunity for everyone who calls the Northwest their home.

We in Northwest public power stand ready to avoid a return to the courtroom and to sit down with litigants to do the hard work of collaborating on a solution. We remain hopeful that the coalition groups will join us.

Share your opinion

Submit your essay of 600-700 words on a highly topical issue or a theme of particular relevance to the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and the Portland area to commentary@oregonian.com. No attachments, please. Please include your email and phone number for verification.

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

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Meet the small business owners electrifying Maine’s rural coast

In Casco Bay’s remote waters, electric workboats and the aquaculture innovators who operate them are putting marine electrification to the test.

On a sunny, 85-degree day in August of 2025, some 9,300 oysters were loaded into ice-filled containers on southern Maine’s Casco Bay. The boat shuttling them from the warm, shallow waters of Recompense Cove to the marina two miles away hummed quietly. Notably missing: the roar of an engine and the smell of diesel.  Heron, the boat in question, is a 28-foot aluminum vessel that runs on two 100 percent electric outboards, the motors that hang off of small and medium-sized boats. It’s one of the first commercial workboats in the United States to use electric outboards. The vessel officially splashed into the waters of South Freeport, Maine, on July 17, 2025. The moment, though, had been years in the making. It required a coalition of industry-wide partners, a $500,000 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant, and at least that much in matching funds from the operating businesses’ cost share agreement and philanthropic investments through the Rockland, Maine-based Island Institute, the Maine Technology Institute, and others. Altogether, the $1 million private-public investment covers Heron’s $425,000 sticker price and the costs to install two high-capacity shoreside chargers. A portion of these funds also supports data collection and research to assess the viability of electric technology in the greater aquaculture industry.  Willy Leathers is the director of farm operations and owner of Maine Ocean Farms, the mid-size aquaculture business that operates this particular boat. The 10-acre plot he and farm co-founder Eric Oransky tend to on Recompense Cove holds about 3 million oysters. The two farmers are among a growing group of small business owners on the cutting edge of marine innovation along rural and remote parts of Maine’s coast. They’ve been in operation together just shy of a decade, and have seen the aquaculture industry spring up around them in the coves and small islands that make up Casco Bay. Beyond the bay is the wide-open Gulf of Maine, which has been documented as one of the world’s fastest-warming bodies of water. Between 2004 and 2016, it warmed more quickly than 99 percent of the global ocean, a trend scientists attribute to climate change caused by humans burning fossil fuels.  For Leathers and Oransky, there’s a connection between electrifying operations and transitioning away from the fossil fuels that have impacted their home waters. But beyond reducing environmental impact, the farmers say there’s another motivator: being a good neighbor. One feature of replacing traditional gas and diesel-powered outboards is that the electric versions are quieter. “Our boats are our workplaces,” said Leathers. “We’re out there for eight hours a day, five days a week, so reducing noise and reducing on-site emissions is a goal of not only improving the workplace but also improving our potential impact on the environment around us, whether in an ecological sense or a community sense.” Staying in the community’s good graces is essential for a business that operates year-round in close quarters with at least a dozen other farms, as well as traditional fisheries and shorefront landowners.  By the winter, Leathers and his crew expect to load between 10,000 and 15,000 oysters onto Heron each day they harvest. When the temperatures drop, they’ll no longer need containers filled with ice to keep the oysters cool. What the farmers don’t know is how the technology in their new battery-powered boat will fare in these cold, salty conditions. Part of their mission, and the DOE grant agreement, is to find out. “There’s a great proving ground here, of saying if this technology is going to develop, this is a place where it’s going to be put through its paces,” Leathers said.  A tractor for the sea A few miles down the coast, Chad Strater cruised up the Cousins River in Yarmouth, Maine on his 26-foot, all-electric workboat. He was headed to the Sea Meadow Marine Foundation, a nonprofit waterfront facility he co-owns and is actively transforming into what he calls an “aquaculture innovation hub.”  Since its launch last fall, Strater has used his electric boat almost daily for the marine construction work he does with his own business, the Boat Yard, and with partner Shred Electric, a startup that replaces gas generators with batteries to power sea farm equipment. Both the Boat Yard and Shred Electric share space at the Sea Meadow Marine Foundation’s Yarmouth facility. Strater’s boat has one battery-powered outboard that can haul equipment to sea farms and other marine businesses within a 15 mile radius on Casco Bay. Nick Planson, Shred Electric’s CEO and Strater’s business partner, said the two were impressed by the boat’s performance during the winter. The switch to an electric outboard was born of necessity, Strater said. When using a gas-powered boat, he’d lose fuel from idling and maneuvering the boat around work sites. Now, Strater’s success with the electric boat doubles as a model for others in the marine industry, like sea farmers, who are curious about making a switch.  Maine Ocean Farms owner Willy Leathers (left) handles what he calls “product”: three year old oysters ready for market. Fellow farmer and co-founder Eric Oransky (right) prepares to sort the mesh bag cages where the oysters grow. Julia Tilton / The Daily Yonder “You need the right tools to do the job,” said Strater. “You can’t be out there farming potatoes in a tractor from 1982 and expect to be efficient. So developing tools that make sense for efficiency, for Maine sea farmers, is what we’re doing.” In this early stage of marine electrification, aquaculture operations, or sea farms, are a logical use case, said Lia Morris, the senior community development officer at the Island Institute’s Center for Marine Economy. That’s because farmers have known variables like range, location, capacity, and schedule that tend not to change. Morris is working with Willy Leathers and Maine Ocean Farms on data collection and analysis as they compare their new boat, Heron, to a control: their existing gas-powered workboat.  “It’s almost like writing the case studies,” said Morris. “It’s putting the qualitative and quantitative data on paper and presenting the solution so that people can see how they can replicate it. That’s part of our long game in terms of outboards and commercial adoption.” Still, there are significant hurdles when it comes to scaling up electrification in Maine’s aquaculture industry. Up front, electric boats are anywhere from 20 percent to 30 percent more expensive than gas-powered ones. Once they’re in the water, charging is difficult because Maine’s sea farms are spread across a vast and mostly rural area that is largely unequipped with the charging infrastructure this transition will require.  “It’s the chicken and the egg problem,” Leathers said. “What comes first? You put a charger in and there’s nobody to use it, or you have a bunch of boats waiting to charge, but then nobody wants to invest in the boats because there’s nowhere to charge them.” Uncharted waters Like Leathers’ boat Heron, Strater’s boat was funded in part by federal and philanthropic support, including grants from some of the same institutional partners like Island Institute and Maine Technology Institute. About half of the boat’s cost, which comes in around $100,000, was financed with private investment and loans from the Coastal Enterprises Inc., a community development financial institution that helps Maine’s small businesses access lending.  Strater said the boat’s relatively low cost, about a fourth of the price tag on a boat like Leathers’ Heron, is an important part of the pilot model, since many small business owners can’t foot a several hundred thousand dollar investment up front. He and Planson have worked with the Coastal Enterprises Inc. on a marine green loan program to set up additional financing options apart from federal and philanthropic grant structures. It’s part of Planson’s philosophy to “de-risk” electrification for farmers who want to try the new technology without financial strain. “We’re working towards having all of these solutions be affordable without grant funding,” said Planson.  Chad Strater has been using his electric workboat almost daily since it launched in the fall of 2024. Julia Tilton / The Daily Yonder For now, that’s an uphill climb. In Maine, it comes at a time when marine businesses are already struggling to overcome rising costs associated with working on a rapidly developing coastline. In the early 2000s, nonprofit and government entities in Maine identified a growing risk to the state’s “working waterfront,” a term used to describe the network of access points that marine industries, including the state’s $3.2 billion seafood sector, depend on to make a living. A 2006 report commissioned by the Island Institute found that of Maine’s 3,500 miles of coastline, only 20 miles were dedicated working waterfront space.  The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association listed climate change, sea level rise, and real estate development as ongoing threats to Maine’s working waterfront in a 2020 report. Of the state’s remaining 20 miles of working waterfront, NOAA wrote that just eight miles are dedicated for public use. The remaining 12 miles are privately owned and thus vulnerable to residential or commercial development.  Rebecca Rundquist is a board member of the Sea Meadow Marine Foundation, the nonprofit organization focused on protecting Maine’s working waterfront whose marina provides space for Strater and Planson’s electric boat. She said that development along the coast, and in a small town like Yarmouth, affects local food sources and the economy. She sees innovation as a way to “revitalize” communities and generate excitement around the working waterfront at a hyper-local scale. The Island Institute’s Lia Morris (left) is working with Willy Leathers (right) and his crew at Maine Ocean Farms to collect performance data on the electric boat Heron, pictured here charging from a low-capacity shoreside power supply at a slip in South Freeport, Maine. Julia Tilton / The Daily Yonder “Our message is we don’t have a one-size-fits-all. We’re here to show how you work with your community to identify the most important needs with these parcels,” said Runquist. In Yarmouth, the need revolves around aquaculture and electrification. Both Strater’s boat and Heron, the electric vessel operated by Maine Ocean Farms, will soon have access to a higher capacity level two charging station at the Sea Meadow Marine Foundation along the Cousins River. Once it’s installed, the boats will be able to get a full charge in a matter of hours as opposed to the overnight shift they plug in for now. The funding for the station comes from the Island Institute and the Island Institute and the DOE grant that helped build Heron.  While it’s a start, those involved on Casco Bay recognize there’s more progress to be made on charging infrastructure, particularly as businesses up the rural parts of the coast go electric. Island Institute is preparing to release a Shoreline Charging Infrastructure report later this year detailing specific challenges around grid readiness for marine electrification in Maine. “It will be a public resource that people can read and digest and ask questions,” Morris said. “Our goal and hope is really to elevate the conversation around electrification and electric propulsion.” Finding a charge For now, Strater keeps things simple. At the end of his workday, he docked the boat along the Cousins River and headed toward a Ford charger, the same one he uses to charge his all-electric Ford Lightning truck when it’s parked at the marina. The low-capacity level two charger is mounted on a wooden post a few yards from the shore. Strater grabbed a thick charging cable to run back down toward the water, and  a light blinked green on the charger as he plugged the cable into the all-electric outboard, hovering several feet out of the water. The boat would sit there, slowly charging, for the next eight hours.  A Ford charger provides low-capacity charging to the electric outboard on Chad Strater’s boat at the Sea Meadow Marine Foundation in Yarmouth, Maine. Strater can use the same charger to plug in his Ford Lightning electric truck when he’s at the marina. Julia Tilton / The Daily Yonder Usually, the down time isn’t a problem for Strater, who puts in eight-hour workdays on the boat and then leaves it overnight to charge. In the instance he does need a quick fill, he can tow the boat over land with his Ford Lightning to a Tesla fast charger off the nearby interstate. At the front edge of innovation, it’s this kind of creativity that makes Morris excited about the future of electric boat adoption in the region. “Mainers are scrappy and, you know — rural context — people figure out how to make things work,” Morris said. Reporting for this article was made possible by the Guerry Beam Memorial Reporting Grant award from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Meet the small business owners electrifying Maine’s rural coast on Sep 21, 2025.

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom Extends Cap-And-Trade Program Aimed at Curbing Carbon Emissions

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill extending the state's cap-and-trade program through 2045

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday extended a signature state program aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions through 2045, a move Democrats cheered but Republicans warned would raise gas prices.The program known as cap and trade sets a declining limit on total greenhouse gas emissions in the state from major polluters. Companies must reduce their emissions, buy allowances from the state or other businesses, or fund projects aimed at offsetting their pollution. Money the state receives from the sales funds climate-change mitigation, affordable housing and transportation projects, as well as utility bill credits for Californians. It was set to expire after 2030. The law Newsom signed Friday at the Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco potentially boosts carbon-removal projects and requires the program to align with California's target of achieving so-called carbon neutrality by 2045. That means the state will remove as many carbon emissions as it releases. The law changes the name to “cap and invest” to emphasize that the money goes toward other programs.“We’re doubling down on our best tool to combat Trump’s assaults on clean air – Cap-and-Invest – by making polluters pay for projects that support our most impacted communities,” Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement. Newsom also signed a law committing $1 billion in program revenue for the state’s long-delayed high-speed rail project, $800 million for an affordable housing program, $250 million for community air protection programs and $1 billion for the Legislature to decide on annually.He approved other measures aimed at advancing the state’s energy transition and lowering costs for Californians. They include laws to speed up permitting for oil production in Kern County, refill a fund that covers the cost of wildfire damage when utility equipment sparks a blaze and allow the state’s grid operator to partner with a regional group to manage power markets in western states. Newsom also signed a bill that would increase requirements for air monitoring in areas overburdened by pollution and codify a bureau within the Justice Department created in 2018 to protect communities from environmental injustices.California has some of the highest utility and gas prices in the country. Officials face increased pressure to stabilize the cost and supply of fuel amid the planned closures of two oil refineries that make up roughly 18% of the state’s refining capacity, according to energy regulators.Environmental justice advocates said the cap-and-trade extension doesn't go far enough to address air pollution impacting low-income Californians and communities of color more likely to live near major polluters. The program's “cap” applies to planet-warming emissions, not other pollutants impacting air quality. Cap and trade doesn't set emissions limits for individual facilities, meaning an industrial polluter could continue to emit the same amount of greenhouse gases over time so long as it has the right amount of credits or offsets.Other critics of the cap-and-trade extension are worried about it raising costs. The program has increased gas costs by about 26 cents per gallon, according to a February report from the Independent Emissions Market Advisory Committee, a group of experts that analyzes the program. It has played “a very small role” in increasing electricity prices because the state’s grid isn’t very carbon intensive, the report says.“I said it in June and I’ll say it again: legislative Democrats live in ‘Bizarro World,’" said Republican state Sen. Tony Strickland. “Their idea of tackling affordability is extending the Cap-and-Trade program, a hidden tax that drives up costs on everything from gas to groceries. That’s not climate leadership. I call it economic sabotage.”But Democratic Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, who wrote the reauthorization bill, said it will help the state fight climate change because “the cost of inaction is immeasurable.” She referenced the devastating wildfire that ripped through Pacific Palisades in her district in January.Daniel Barad, the western states acting co-director for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said last week that the extension comes at a key time."The most important thing is it extends it to 2045, which was the most critical thing that the state could have done, especially in the face of federal rollbacks and attacks on California's authority to enforce our lifesaving regulations,” he said.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

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Australia Targets at Least 62% Emissions Cut in the Next Decade

Australia has set a new target of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by between 62% and 70% below 2005 levels by 2035

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia on Thursday set a new target of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by between 62% and 70% below 2005 levels by 2035.Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, leader of the center-left Labor Party, will take his government’s 2035 target to the U.N. General Assembly next week.Under the Paris climate agreement signed a decade ago, nations must increase their emissions reduction targets every five years.“This is a responsible target backed by the science, backed by a practical plan to get there and built on proven technology,” Albanese told reporters.“It’s the right target to protect our environment, to protect and advance our economy and jobs and to ensure that we act in our national interest and in the interest of this and future generations,” he added.Albanese said the target was consistent with the European Union considering for themselves a reduction target range of between 63% and 70% below 1990 levels.Matt Kean, chair of the Climate Change Authority that advises the government on climate policies, said Australia’s 2035 target demonstrated a “higher ambition than most other advanced economies.”Environmental groups had argued for a reduction target exceeding 70%.But business groups had warned cuts above 70% would risk billions of dollars in exports and send companies offshore.The conservative opposition Liberal Party, which has lost the last two federal elections, is considering abandoning its own commitment to net-zero by 2050, its only reduction target.Opposition leader Sussan Ley said the 2035 target was not credible because the government would fail to meet its 2030 target.“These targets cannot be met. They are fantasy: we know, Australians know, and they’re very disappointed in this prime minister,” Ley told reporters.The government maintains Australia is on track to narrowly achieve its 2030 target.Larissa Waters, a senator leading the environmentally-focused Australian Greens, said the government’s actual target was 62%, which she described as “appallingly low.”The government was not addressing Australia’s coal and liquefied natural gas exports, which were among the world’s largest of those fossil fuels, she said.“Labor have sold out to the coal and gas corporations with this utter failure of a climate target,” Waters told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar described the 2035 target as “ambitious.”“One of the biggest issues that industry faces at the moment is the costs that we incur in terms of energy. We’ve got to have a sustainable pathway forward. We’ve got to have energy security and we’ve got to have energy affordability as well,” McKellar said.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

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‘It’s not just our houses’: can a Scottish village save Queen Elizabeth’s coastal path from the waves?

The people of Johnshaven have watched the sea edge closer and closer. Preserving the path is key to protecting their communityPhotographs by Murdo MacLeodWhen Charis Duthie moved to Johnshaven with her husband in 1984, she could cycle along the coastal path out of the village. Now, she meets a dead end where the sea has snatched the land and is instead greeted with a big red warning sign of what is to come: Danger Coastal Erosion.“You can see gardens that were there and now they’re gone,” she says.Johnshaven, on Scotland’s North Sea coast, will attract more visitors if it has a well maintained coastal path Continue reading...

When Charis Duthie moved to Johnshaven with her husband in 1984, she could cycle along the coastal path out of the village. Now, she meets a dead end where the sea has snatched the land and is instead greeted with a big red warning sign of what is to come: Danger Coastal Erosion.“You can see gardens that were there and now they’re gone,” she says.The north-east coast of Scotland is experiencing a rapidly worsening erosion problem that will only be exacerbated by recurrent patterns of extreme weather and rising sea levels.Johnshaven, a small village with a close-knit community of 640 people about 30 miles (48km) south of Aberdeen, is particularly exposed.The village’s paths bear the scars of coastal erosion in the form of craters in the well-trodden rock, while some, such as the one Duthie points to, have disappeared altogether. The latest was taken from the village in 2023 during one of the many extreme storms that winter.Finding a solution to the problem has taken on an urgency like never before. Three years ago came the announcement of the Platinum Jubilee Path, named in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s 70 years on the throne. The aim is for it to start in St Cyrus, four miles south of Johnshaven, and end about 90 miles further north in Cullen, a village with close associations to Robert the Bruce.With the markets that have traditionally fuelled its economy – fishing and oil and gas – dwindling, Johnshaven wants to attract more visitors through the coastal path plans. The aim is to be part of Scotland’s Great Trails, which offers a map of named, walkable trails around Scotland. Currently, there is a gap in the map along the north-east coast between Aberdeen and Dundee, and Johnshaven sits in the middle of it.For Duthie, 71, helping to fill this gap is an increasingly daunting task. She is part of a small team called the Mearns Coastal Heritage Trail (Merchat) who work to restore and create coastal paths in Aberdeenshire. But as they work in one area, the sea snatches land away in another.“A lot of what we are trying to do is to prevent erosion with rock armour, which is really the only secure method,” she says.Rock armour, sometimes known as riprap, is made up of big boulders and rocks placed along the coastline to protect against the waves.To complete areas of the trail, Merchat has had to gain funding through grant applications. The food ingredients firm Macphie has donated £30,000, and a further £40,000 has come from Aberdeenshire council’s allocation of crown estate Scotland cash from the Coastal Communities Fund, money allocated by the government to help coastal communities “flourish and strengthen their appeal as places to live, work and visit”.Caspar Lampkin, project officer for the Aberdeenshire coastal paths on Benholm and Johnshaven community council, says further help from Aberdeenshire council is likely to be minimal. “They’ve told us that they don’t have the resources to do anything,” he says.“If small villages want anything like this to happen, it has got to be locally led, because we’re not going to get much help from the government or the local council.”Since April, Duthie, Lampkin and the Merchat team have been working to establish a way to apply for designated funding. “We have now started a charity called the North East Scotland Coastal Trust [Nescat] and we are paddling very fast to get the whole thing established and get going with it,” says Duthie.Meanwhile, another issue beyond access to the beautiful scenery is becoming increasingly urgent, says Lampkin. The community council has identified 100 houses in the village at risk of flooding from the sea in the coming years if no action is taken on erosion.If it’s a high tide, it’s stormy and there’s wind, those elements blow water in the houseWhile the focus of the team’s work is meant to be on restoring the paths, he says that any funding they get will probably need to be used on rock armour in areas that could protect housing along the path.Angie Dunsire, 74, walks no more than 10 steps from her doorstep before reaching the eroding coast.She has lived in Johnshaven for 32 years on the aptly named Beach Road. She says she gets a call from the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency every time there is a risk of flooding.As Storm Floris approached in August, they called. “You have to be careful and listen,” she says. “We had a little bit [of water] in [the house] the other day because if it’s a high tide, it’s stormy and there’s wind, those elements blow it in.”Dunsire is scared of what the North Sea is capable of. In the distance there is a reminder. Sitting only three miles from Johnshaven is Miltonhaven – or what is left of it.It is reported by Duncan Fraser, in the book Portrait of a Parish, written in the 1970s about the parish of St Cyrus, that Miltonhaven was taken by the North Sea after Robert Scott of Dunninald arrived in the village in the 1700s.“What first drew his attention was the limestone rock that stretched in a reef across the bay, like a natural breakwater guarding the little village from the angry sea,” writes Fraser.Scott was from a family that built lime kilns to produce fertiliser for fields. From about 1750 Scott removed most of this limestone rock for his business, so the story goes, leaving the village exposed.By the 1790s, Fraser wrote, the waves had taken the “entire village”, which now lies underwater 100 yards from the shore.In an effort to right some of those so easily visible wrongs from the past, the stretch of path along Johnshaven’s Beach Road will be the first focus for rock armour with any funding the community can muster. But rock armour is expensive – about £1,000 for a small truckload – so it’s likely there won’t be much left over for path building.“People say, well it’s just your houses why go to all this expense?” says Dunsire. “Well it’s not just our houses it’s the road that goes right through the village to the park and further on.“We’re supposed to be using the coastal path and extending that. What is the point if this [the land and road along the coast] goes?”A Scottish government spokesperson says it has provided local authorities with £11.7m to support coastal change adaptation, while Aberdeenshire council says its overall budget for coast protection is £75,000 and there are no plans for any new protection works in Johnshaven. It says support and advice has been given in the setting up of Nescat and that it is not aware of any issues with the part of Beach Road that is council owned.

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State-Funded Gun Range in South Dakota Nearly Finished, Expected to Open in November

The South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks Department hopes to have a mostly state-funded gun range near Rapid City ready for public use in early November

PIEDMONT, S.D. (AP) — Dust plumes rose frequently along a gravel section of Elk Vale Road on the open prairie of Meade County, South Dakota in early September where workers are vigorously trying to finish a gun range that will be among the nation’s largest.Plumbers, landscapers, equipment operators and construction crews were all busy working or driving to or from the 400-acre site. The goal, according to the South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks Department, is to have the range, located about 12 miles north of Rapid City, ready for public use on Saturday, Nov. 8.Construction on the range – now known as the Pete Lien & Sons Shooting Sports Complex – has happened quickly and is going along smoothly, far different from the long, up-and-down path the project went through in the planning and funding processes.The range proposal was raised by the GFP in 2021 with strong support from former Gov. Kristi Noem. Despite opposition by some lawmakers and neighbors, it is close to completion and is creating a buzz among shooting enthusiasts across the state and region, said John Kanta, a GFP section chief.“There’s a tremendous amount of excitement among folks who want to start using it,” he said. “Some weeks we’re hearing from people daily who are super excited to get out there and start shooting or get their events scheduled.”The $20 million range will include 160 rifle, handgun and shotgun shooting bays, a tactical shooting range for shooting and moving, and a 10,000 square-foot main building that can house events, law enforcement training and firearm education, Kanta said. Some lawmakers opposed funding mechanism Almost immediately after the range proposal was announced, both support and opposition arose within the South Dakota Legislature.While some lawmakers have supported construction as a way to serve the public and potentially generate millions of dollars in annual tourism revenue, others have been bothered by the way the project has been funded.Rep. Liz May, a Republican from Kyle, opposed the use of taxpayer money to build the range. May, who serves on the Joint Committee on Appropriations, said lawmakers defeated six separate bills or funding mechanisms brought forward by range supporters.“We kept killing it, and they kept bringing it back and bringing it back,” May told News Watch. “I’ve got nothing against guns or gun ranges. But that’s just not an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars.”May was particularly bothered when Noem allocated $13.5 million in Future Fund dollars toward construction of the range in 2024.The Future Fund consists of money collected from most South Dakota businesses as part of unemployment compensation fees. The money is required to be used for “workforce development and technical assistance programs” for workers, including those who have been laid off. Grants are made by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and do not require legislative approval.“There was opposition from landowners and lawmakers, and they basically just ignored all that and went around the process by using those Future Funds,” May said. “With the whole thing — they really stepped outside the boundaries.” Donors step in to complete project GFP officials promised that donations would help fund the construction of the gun range, and their plan has succeeded, with more than $6.3 million either donated or pledged for the project so far.According to a GFP budget document, obtained by News Watch through a public records request, more than $3 million has been donated and another $3.3 million has been pledged over the next five years by corporations, individuals and groups that support the project.About a third of the donations have come from firearm industry businesses or groups that support shooting. The top donation of $800,000 with a commitment to give another $1.2 million in the next three years came from Pete Lien & Sons, a Rapid City concrete company that is now the namesake of the range.The next largest donation of $600,000 came from South Dakota Youth Hunting Adventures, a charity group, followed by $200,000 from Scull Construction of Rapid City and $150,000 each from firearm manufacturers Smith & Wesson and Glock.Annual ongoing expenses at the range will be about $400,000 and include three full-time employees and some seasonal workers as well as upkeep, Kanta said. Those costs will be covered by permit fees paid by some users, support from government agencies that use the range for training and possibly from some federal grant funds, he said.“No general fund money will be used,” Kanta said. Some neighbor opposition remains Joe Norman and his wife, Diane, own a home and a 7,600-acre cattle ranch in Meade County with borders that extend to within close proximity of the gun range site.Norman, 69, is one of several ranchers and landowners in the area who oppose the location of the gun range. After testifying before the Legislature and opposing the range in public meetings, he is resigned to the fact the range is about to become reality.Yet Norman remains concerned about heavy traffic on gravel roads in the area, disruption of his cattle, and the noise from the repeated firing of handguns and rifles.“If they’ve got 175 shooting bays and it’s full, that’s potentially 175 shots every minute. And if they do that for 10 to 12 hours a day, I think the noise is going to be unbelievable,” Norman told News Watch. “The roads have also gone to heck with all the construction traffic.”Initially, the range was expected to have 175 shooting bays, though that number has been reduced to 160, Kanta said.Norman said he’s already heard some shooting at the site, even though the formal opening is not until November. He’s concerned that promises to keep the noise level under 64 decibels will be difficult or impossible to monitor and enforce.Noise from the range will be reduced by the natural topography of the land and by berms and baffling that will help stifle sound, Kanta said. Shooters will aim to the east and northeast where there are no structures for miles, and lead bullets will be captured and contained within federal environmental guidelines, he said.As part of an agreement with Meade County, a 3-mile section of Elk Vale Road leading to the range will also be paved in the coming months to reduce dust from vehicles.Norman said he’s disappointed that, in his opinion, the concerns of neighbors were largely ignored by the GFP, state officials and lawmakers who supported the range and were determined to find a way to get it funded and built.“We were fighting the governor, the lieutenant governor and legislators,” he said. “It feels like the GFP responses have all been smoke and mirrors.” Excitement building for new shooting option Despite its strong firearm culture, South Dakota has a fairly limited number of gun ranges. And one argument from range supporters was that more controlled shooting sites were needed to prevent gun owners from leaving messes and creating nuisances at unofficial shooting sites in the Black Hills.The GFP operates 20 public shooting sites, though most are for archery and only seven allow firearm discharges. Those that allow firearms include North Point in Lake Andes, Oahe Downstream in Fort Pierre, Louis Smith near Mobridge, Brule Bottom north of Chamberlain and South Shore in Codington County.This interactive map on the GFP website includes location and consumer information for 67 public and private shooting range sites in the state, though many have limited access or are for archery only.A few ranges are outdoors and allow easy public access, such as the Fall River Gun Club near Hot Springs and the Watertown Area Shooting Complex. A few ranges are indoors, including at Gary’s Gun Shop in Sioux Falls.The large size, wide range of shooting options and quality of amenities at the new state range will make it a destination for shooting enthusiasts across the state and nation and possibly even internationally, said Mark Blote, a co-owner of First Stop Gun & Coin in Rapid City.Blote visited the range site in early September and was impressed with the progress. Excitement over the range’s opening is palpable in the firearms community and in the local tourism industry, he said.“I think it’s going to be great for the gun folks in our area. But it’s truly a world-class facility, so it will do a lot for the economy,” Blote said. “It’s going to bring in a lot of competitions, which will help the hotels and restaurants.”This story was originally published by South Dakota News Watch and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

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