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Owner Of New York City’s Defunct Nuclear Plant Sues The State

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Thursday, April 18, 2024

The company that owns the shuttered nuclear plant that once provided the bulk of New York City’s zero-carbon electricity is suing the state over a law passed last year specifically to block the Indian Point power station from carrying out routine releases of treated wastewater into the Hudson River, HuffPost has learned.Virtually every nuclear power plant all over the world releases tiny volumes of a radioactive isotope known as tritium from its cooling water into surrounding waterways. Unlike the long-lasting and dangerous radioisotopes that form during the atom-splitting process, tritium ― an isotope of hydrogen ― laces into water, making it almost impossible to extract. Luckily, tritium, which has never been linked to cancer in humans, is too weak to penetrate skin and decays quickly in 12-year half lives, so power plants spew small amounts into the environment at rates indistinguishable from what naturally occurs from cosmic rays from space or what ends up leaked into waterways via dump neon signage.When a nuclear reactor is generating electricity, these releases are a matter of routine operation. Once those plants shut down and the utility that runs them sells off the facility to a decommissioning company, the onus falls on firms, such as Florida-based Holtec International, to obtain new permits to resume releases of tritium. That means going through a regulatory process that includes public hearings, giving Americans who visualize all radioactive waste as the scientifically absurd caricatures of green glowing goop depicted on shows like “The Simpsons” fresh cause for panic.Last August, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed legislation “restricting discharges of any radiological substance into the Hudson River in connection with the decommissioning of a nuclear power plant.”Holtec now says that statute violates the federal law that gave the government in Washington complete control over how radioactive materials are regulated.In litigation filed with the Southern District Court of New York on Thursday, Holtec said the Empire State’s law violates the federal statute giving the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s “sole authority over radiological discharges from nuclear power plants whether online or decommissioning.”“The failure of New York State to respect Federal Law, and follow the facts and science of the issue, left us no other means for remedy,” the company said in a statement shared first with HuffPost. “The passage of the bill has already delayed the planned completion of the decommissioning of Indian Point an additional 8 years, which hurts the local community’s desire to see the project completed and the property returned as an asset for economic development in the region. We look forward to the legal process moving along on this important decision.”In a state press release announcing the passage of the legislation last year, Hochul and bipartisan New York lawmakers who praised the bill referred four times to the “economic” benefits of banning Indian Point from discharging wastewater. But Holtec accused the state of using the “guise of economic” issues to “hide” the real intent of regulating radiological materials, according to legal filings HuffPost reviewed.“They’re welcome to sue,” said state Sen. Pete Harckham (D), who authored the Senate version of the legislation.He pointed to a 1983 Supreme Court decision that ruled in favor of California regulators’ right to restrict nuclear power plants based on the economic toll that the facilities could take on the surrounding area. While he said locals only learned about the tritium discharges after Indian Point shut down, “once they found out there was enormous outcry.”Now, he said, communities along the Hudson are being “damaged with the knowledge that tritium is being released into the river.” Neither Hochul’s office nor the New York State Assembly lawmaker who introduced the statute ― Assembly member Dana Levenberg (D) ― responded to requests for comment Wednesday. The lawsuit is the first major challenge in years to the state’s efforts to single out Indian Point while attempting to revive the nuclear power industry that still supplies most of New York’s zero-carbon electricity. Indian Point Energy Center is seen on the Hudson River in Buchanan, New York, on April 26, 2021.The Biden administration has directed billions toward maintaining the U.S. nuclear fleet, which has lost more than a dozen reactors in the past decade.In January, the administration offered Pacific Gas & Electric almost $1.1 billion to relicense Diablo Canyon, California’s last nuclear power plant and the source of as much as 10% of the state’s electricity. Just last month, the Department of Energy gave Holtec an unprecedented $1.5 billion loan to reopen the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, the most recent U.S. atomic energy station to close down amid growing competition with cheap natural gas. Billions more are going to researching and testing novel kinds of reactors and subsidizing the electricity they ultimately generate years from now. If its efforts to restart Palisades’ single reactor pan out, Holtec even plans to ultimately build two of its own small modular reactors to expand the Michigan plant. With billion-dollar costs and decade-long construction timelines, nuclear energy benefits from the kind of largesse the federal government can uniquely provide. Conveniently for the country’s most tightly regulated energy sector, the federal government agreed under the Atomic Energy Act to take full responsibility for managing the radioactive waste piling up at the roughly 93 remaining nuclear power plants. Compared to the amount of electricity fission produces, managing long-term nuclear waste is a relatively minor problem. But the federal government is currently hamstrung. Federal law stipulates that Nevada’s Yucca Mountain serve as the first permanent site for nuclear waste. Congress hasn’t amended the law since the Obama administration mothballed the project more than a decade ago, preventing federal regulators from considering alternative locations for a nuclear waste dump. The Biden administration, meanwhile, is directing more funding toward research into ways to recycle spent fuel. New York isn’t the only state to try to intervene in nuclear waste issues. In Massachusetts, where Holtec owns and is decommissioning the defunct Pilgrim nuclear power plant, lawmakers passed legislation in 2022 to block the company from releasing tritiated water ― but focused the statute on non-radioactive materials to avoid violating the federal law. In New Mexico, where Holtec proposed building a storage facility for highly radioactive spent fuel canisters, the state passed a law banning permitting of any nuclear waste sites until the federal government sorts out the Yucca Mountain situation. Federal regulators approved the project last year. While Holtec’s lobbyists have argued this law, too, violates the Atomic Energy Act, lawmakers in desert states where the U.S. government tested nuclear weapons have pointed to the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision holding Virginia’s ban on uranium mining. Holtec’s other options for disposing of the tritiated water filling the storage tanks at Indian Point or Pilgrim include trucking the liquid out of state or evaporating the wastewater on-site. Federal regulators said those options would cost more ― further prolonging the decommissioning work ― and carried greater risks than diluting the cooling water and pumping it into the Hudson River or Cape Cod Bay. Tritium became an international concern last year when the state-owned utility that owns the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant started releasing wastewater used to cool the melted-down reactor after the 2011 accident into the Pacific Ocean. Despite spewing tritium in far larger volumes from their own active nuclear plants, the Chinese, Russian and South Korean governments protested Japan’s decision to start pumping the wastewater into the ocean, in what was widely seen as a geopolitical gambit.While nearly a century of research has failed to link tritium exposure to cancer, experiments on mice forced to ingest enormous daily doses throughout their lifetimes tended to develop cancer and die younger than their counterparts who hadn’t, according to a 2021 paper in the Journal of Radiation Research. But large-scale epidemiological studies are challenging since tritium is difficult to detect in the environment.To play it safe, regulators across the planet have typically set limits for releasing tritium into waterways at levels far below what naturally occurs from cosmic rays, sewage treatment plants and leaked chemicals from scrapped self-illuminating exit signs. A turbine generator used to produce power is seen at Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, New York, on April 26, 2021.At a decommissioning hearing last year in the Hudson Valley suburb where Indian Point’s employees once lived, one anti-nuclear protester ― a Manhattan lawyer who left the city after the Sept. 11 terror attacks ― blamed errant radiation from the power plant for the cancer she developed a few years ago.Another demonstrator ― a lifelong resident and retired art teacher who said she grew up protesting against Indian Point ― worried that if Holtec began releasing tritium into the Hudson, she was at risk since she spent the whole summer wading into the river at a boating dock. Her life seemed like a testament to the company’s claims that there’s no reason to fear long-term exposure. Asked whether she’d seen health impacts, given decades of exposure to tritium released throughout the operating lives of the plant’s two reactors, she seemed surprised. She said she had not experienced the serious diseases groups like the one that organized the rally she attended insisted were linked to living near nuclear plants.Both women were attending a rally organized by Food and Water Watch, an environmental group that spent millions fighting to shut down Indian Point back in 2014. HuffPost is declining to name the women, who were not public figures, because the interviews were conducted in person a year ago, but published samplings of the conversations here for the first time to illustrate the range of views coming from the local opponents who claimed the law banning Indian Point’s tritium releases as a victory. Some questions remain about how tritium might accumulate at the mouth of pipes spewing tritiated wastewater into waterways for years on end. “‘The solution to pollution is dilution’ doesn’t work if it accumulates at the end of a pipe in seafloor sediment, for example, or if they bioaccumulate in fish that are caught and consumed by people,” Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, told HuffPost last year. “Another thing we should be considering is whether this release from a decommissioned reactor should be regulated the same way we regulate releases from power plants that [are] in operation,” he added. “At least then they’re creating a benefit. They’re creating electricity.”From Taiwan to Germany to California, fossil fuels have replaced the zero-carbon generation from atomic power plants that close prematurely. New York is no different. The nation’s largest city went from a roughly 75% fossil-fueled power grid prior to Indian Point’s shutdown to more than 95% overnight. Without Indian Point’s supply of steady, relatively cheap electricity in the face of surging demand for air conditioning, outages across the five boroughs worsened during the past two summers. Mounting evidence suggests that radiation is less deadly than previously believed. Studies on cattle left alive in the exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant in Japan have not shown the spikes in the rate of cancer that existing safety models indicated would happen. Some amounts of radiation exposure may even offer health benefits. By contrast, the tiny particles of air pollution spewing from automobile tailpipes and fuel-burning power plants are now linked to disease ranging from cancer and heart disease to erectile dysfunction and infertility. And that’s putting aside the destabilizing effect fossil fuel emissions are having on the planet’s weather patterns. “We’ve been studying radioactivity for more than 100 years, and we have a pretty darn good idea of what the effects of radiation are and what doses are needed to cause those impacts,” said Kathryn Higley, an Oregon State University professor who researches radiation and health.“The dose makes the poison,” she added. “It’s radioactivity, it’s how much of it is being released and where it’s going.”Support HuffPostOur 2024 Coverage Needs YouYour Loyalty Means The World To UsAt HuffPost, we believe that everyone needs high-quality journalism, but we understand that not everyone can afford to pay for expensive news subscriptions. That is why we are committed to providing deeply reported, carefully fact-checked news that is freely accessible to everyone.Whether you come to HuffPost for updates on the 2024 presidential race, hard-hitting investigations into critical issues facing our country today, or trending stories that make you laugh, we appreciate you. The truth is, news costs money to produce, and we are proud that we have never put our stories behind an expensive paywall.Would you join us to help keep our stories free for all? Your contribution of as little as $2 will go a long way.Can't afford to donate? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.As Americans head to the polls in 2024, the very future of our country is at stake. At HuffPost, we believe that a free press is critical to creating well-informed voters. That's why our journalism is free for everyone, even though other newsrooms retreat behind expensive paywalls.Our journalists will continue to cover the twists and turns during this historic presidential election. With your help, we'll bring you hard-hitting investigations, well-researched analysis and timely takes you can't find elsewhere. Reporting in this current political climate is a responsibility we do not take lightly, and we thank you for your support.Contribute as little as $2 to keep our news free for all.Can't afford to donate? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.Dear HuffPost ReaderThank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. Would you consider becoming a regular HuffPost contributor?Dear HuffPost ReaderThank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. If circumstances have changed since you last contributed, we hope you’ll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.Support HuffPostAlready contributed? Log in to hide these messages.

Holtec International says a state statute blocking routine water releases from Indian Point violates federal law.

Virtually every nuclear power plant all over the world releases tiny volumes of a radioactive isotope known as tritium from its cooling water into surrounding waterways. Unlike the long-lasting and dangerous radioisotopes that form during the atom-splitting process, tritium ― an isotope of hydrogen ― laces into water, making it almost impossible to extract. Luckily, tritium, which has never been linked to cancer in humans, is too weak to penetrate skin and decays quickly in 12-year half lives, so power plants spew small amounts into the environment at rates indistinguishable from what naturally occurs from cosmic rays from space or what ends up leaked into waterways via dump neon signage.

When a nuclear reactor is generating electricity, these releases are a matter of routine operation. Once those plants shut down and the utility that runs them sells off the facility to a decommissioning company, the onus falls on firms, such as Florida-based Holtec International, to obtain new permits to resume releases of tritium. That means going through a regulatory process that includes public hearings, giving Americans who visualize all radioactive waste as the scientifically absurd caricatures of green glowing goop depicted on shows like “The Simpsons” fresh cause for panic.

Last August, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed legislation “restricting discharges of any radiological substance into the Hudson River in connection with the decommissioning of a nuclear power plant.”

Holtec now says that statute violates the federal law that gave the government in Washington complete control over how radioactive materials are regulated.

In litigation filed with the Southern District Court of New York on Thursday, Holtec said the Empire State’s law violates the federal statute giving the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s “sole authority over radiological discharges from nuclear power plants whether online or decommissioning.”

“The failure of New York State to respect Federal Law, and follow the facts and science of the issue, left us no other means for remedy,” the company said in a statement shared first with HuffPost. “The passage of the bill has already delayed the planned completion of the decommissioning of Indian Point an additional 8 years, which hurts the local community’s desire to see the project completed and the property returned as an asset for economic development in the region. We look forward to the legal process moving along on this important decision.”

In a state press release announcing the passage of the legislation last year, Hochul and bipartisan New York lawmakers who praised the bill referred four times to the “economic” benefits of banning Indian Point from discharging wastewater. But Holtec accused the state of using the “guise of economic” issues to “hide” the real intent of regulating radiological materials, according to legal filings HuffPost reviewed.

“They’re welcome to sue,” said state Sen. Pete Harckham (D), who authored the Senate version of the legislation.

He pointed to a 1983 Supreme Court decision that ruled in favor of California regulators’ right to restrict nuclear power plants based on the economic toll that the facilities could take on the surrounding area. While he said locals only learned about the tritium discharges after Indian Point shut down, “once they found out there was enormous outcry.”

Now, he said, communities along the Hudson are being “damaged with the knowledge that tritium is being released into the river.” Neither Hochul’s office nor the New York State Assembly lawmaker who introduced the statute ― Assembly member Dana Levenberg (D) ― responded to requests for comment Wednesday.

The lawsuit is the first major challenge in years to the state’s efforts to single out Indian Point while attempting to revive the nuclear power industry that still supplies most of New York’s zero-carbon electricity.

Indian Point Energy Center is seen on the Hudson River in Buchanan, New York, on April 26, 2021.

The Biden administration has directed billions toward maintaining the U.S. nuclear fleet, which has lost more than a dozen reactors in the past decade.

In January, the administration offered Pacific Gas & Electric almost $1.1 billion to relicense Diablo Canyon, California’s last nuclear power plant and the source of as much as 10% of the state’s electricity. Just last month, the Department of Energy gave Holtec an unprecedented $1.5 billion loan to reopen the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, the most recent U.S. atomic energy station to close down amid growing competition with cheap natural gas. Billions more are going to researching and testing novel kinds of reactors and subsidizing the electricity they ultimately generate years from now.

If its efforts to restart Palisades’ single reactor pan out, Holtec even plans to ultimately build two of its own small modular reactors to expand the Michigan plant.

With billion-dollar costs and decade-long construction timelines, nuclear energy benefits from the kind of largesse the federal government can uniquely provide. Conveniently for the country’s most tightly regulated energy sector, the federal government agreed under the Atomic Energy Act to take full responsibility for managing the radioactive waste piling up at the roughly 93 remaining nuclear power plants.

Compared to the amount of electricity fission produces, managing long-term nuclear waste is a relatively minor problem. But the federal government is currently hamstrung. Federal law stipulates that Nevada’s Yucca Mountain serve as the first permanent site for nuclear waste. Congress hasn’t amended the law since the Obama administration mothballed the project more than a decade ago, preventing federal regulators from considering alternative locations for a nuclear waste dump. The Biden administration, meanwhile, is directing more funding toward research into ways to recycle spent fuel.

New York isn’t the only state to try to intervene in nuclear waste issues. In Massachusetts, where Holtec owns and is decommissioning the defunct Pilgrim nuclear power plant, lawmakers passed legislation in 2022 to block the company from releasing tritiated water ― but focused the statute on non-radioactive materials to avoid violating the federal law.

In New Mexico, where Holtec proposed building a storage facility for highly radioactive spent fuel canisters, the state passed a law banning permitting of any nuclear waste sites until the federal government sorts out the Yucca Mountain situation. Federal regulators approved the project last year. While Holtec’s lobbyists have argued this law, too, violates the Atomic Energy Act, lawmakers in desert states where the U.S. government tested nuclear weapons have pointed to the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision holding Virginia’s ban on uranium mining.

Holtec’s other options for disposing of the tritiated water filling the storage tanks at Indian Point or Pilgrim include trucking the liquid out of state or evaporating the wastewater on-site. Federal regulators said those options would cost more ― further prolonging the decommissioning work ― and carried greater risks than diluting the cooling water and pumping it into the Hudson River or Cape Cod Bay.

Tritium became an international concern last year when the state-owned utility that owns the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant started releasing wastewater used to cool the melted-down reactor after the 2011 accident into the Pacific Ocean.

Despite spewing tritium in far larger volumes from their own active nuclear plants, the Chinese, Russian and South Korean governments protested Japan’s decision to start pumping the wastewater into the ocean, in what was widely seen as a geopolitical gambit.

While nearly a century of research has failed to link tritium exposure to cancer, experiments on mice forced to ingest enormous daily doses throughout their lifetimes tended to develop cancer and die younger than their counterparts who hadn’t, according to a 2021 paper in the Journal of Radiation Research. But large-scale epidemiological studies are challenging since tritium is difficult to detect in the environment.

To play it safe, regulators across the planet have typically set limits for releasing tritium into waterways at levels far below what naturally occurs from cosmic rays, sewage treatment plants and leaked chemicals from scrapped self-illuminating exit signs.

A turbine generator used to produce power is seen at Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, New York, on April 26, 2021.

At a decommissioning hearing last year in the Hudson Valley suburb where Indian Point’s employees once lived, one anti-nuclear protester ― a Manhattan lawyer who left the city after the Sept. 11 terror attacks ― blamed errant radiation from the power plant for the cancer she developed a few years ago.

Another demonstrator ― a lifelong resident and retired art teacher who said she grew up protesting against Indian Point ― worried that if Holtec began releasing tritium into the Hudson, she was at risk since she spent the whole summer wading into the river at a boating dock. Her life seemed like a testament to the company’s claims that there’s no reason to fear long-term exposure. Asked whether she’d seen health impacts, given decades of exposure to tritium released throughout the operating lives of the plant’s two reactors, she seemed surprised. She said she had not experienced the serious diseases groups like the one that organized the rally she attended insisted were linked to living near nuclear plants.

Both women were attending a rally organized by Food and Water Watch, an environmental group that spent millions fighting to shut down Indian Point back in 2014. HuffPost is declining to name the women, who were not public figures, because the interviews were conducted in person a year ago, but published samplings of the conversations here for the first time to illustrate the range of views coming from the local opponents who claimed the law banning Indian Point’s tritium releases as a victory.

Some questions remain about how tritium might accumulate at the mouth of pipes spewing tritiated wastewater into waterways for years on end.

“‘The solution to pollution is dilution’ doesn’t work if it accumulates at the end of a pipe in seafloor sediment, for example, or if they bioaccumulate in fish that are caught and consumed by people,” Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, told HuffPost last year.

“Another thing we should be considering is whether this release from a decommissioned reactor should be regulated the same way we regulate releases from power plants that [are] in operation,” he added. “At least then they’re creating a benefit. They’re creating electricity.”

From Taiwan to Germany to California, fossil fuels have replaced the zero-carbon generation from atomic power plants that close prematurely.

New York is no different. The nation’s largest city went from a roughly 75% fossil-fueled power grid prior to Indian Point’s shutdown to more than 95% overnight. Without Indian Point’s supply of steady, relatively cheap electricity in the face of surging demand for air conditioning, outages across the five boroughs worsened during the past two summers.

Mounting evidence suggests that radiation is less deadly than previously believed. Studies on cattle left alive in the exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant in Japan have not shown the spikes in the rate of cancer that existing safety models indicated would happen. Some amounts of radiation exposure may even offer health benefits.

By contrast, the tiny particles of air pollution spewing from automobile tailpipes and fuel-burning power plants are now linked to disease ranging from cancer and heart disease to erectile dysfunction and infertility. And that’s putting aside the destabilizing effect fossil fuel emissions are having on the planet’s weather patterns.

“We’ve been studying radioactivity for more than 100 years, and we have a pretty darn good idea of what the effects of radiation are and what doses are needed to cause those impacts,” said Kathryn Higley, an Oregon State University professor who researches radiation and health.

“The dose makes the poison,” she added. “It’s radioactivity, it’s how much of it is being released and where it’s going.”

Support HuffPost

Our 2024 Coverage Needs You

Your Loyalty Means The World To Us

At HuffPost, we believe that everyone needs high-quality journalism, but we understand that not everyone can afford to pay for expensive news subscriptions. That is why we are committed to providing deeply reported, carefully fact-checked news that is freely accessible to everyone.

Whether you come to HuffPost for updates on the 2024 presidential race, hard-hitting investigations into critical issues facing our country today, or trending stories that make you laugh, we appreciate you. The truth is, news costs money to produce, and we are proud that we have never put our stories behind an expensive paywall.

Would you join us to help keep our stories free for all? Your contribution of as little as $2 will go a long way.

Can't afford to donate? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.

As Americans head to the polls in 2024, the very future of our country is at stake. At HuffPost, we believe that a free press is critical to creating well-informed voters. That's why our journalism is free for everyone, even though other newsrooms retreat behind expensive paywalls.

Our journalists will continue to cover the twists and turns during this historic presidential election. With your help, we'll bring you hard-hitting investigations, well-researched analysis and timely takes you can't find elsewhere. Reporting in this current political climate is a responsibility we do not take lightly, and we thank you for your support.

Contribute as little as $2 to keep our news free for all.

Can't afford to donate? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.

Dear HuffPost Reader

Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.

The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. Would you consider becoming a regular HuffPost contributor?

Dear HuffPost Reader

Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.

The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. If circumstances have changed since you last contributed, we hope you’ll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.

Support HuffPost

Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.

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In the 1930s, workers bored a 13-mile tunnel beneath Mt. San Jacinto. Here's a look inside the engineering feat that carries Colorado River water to Southern California.

Thousands of feet below the snowy summit of Mt. San Jacinto, a formidable feat of engineering and grit makes life as we know it in Southern California possible. The 13-mile-long San Jacinto Tunnel was bored through the mountain in the 1930s by a crew of about 1,200 men who worked day and night for six years, blasting rock and digging with machinery. Completed in 1939, the tunnel was a cornerstone in the construction of the 242-mile Colorado River Aqueduct. It enabled the delivery of as much as 1 billion gallons of water per day.The tunnel is usually off-limits when it is filled and coursing with a massive stream of Colorado River water. 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Crews set up camps, excavated canals and began to blast open shafts through the desert’s rocky spines to make way for water.In 1933, workers started tearing into the San Jacinto Mountains at several locations, from the east and the west, as well as excavating shafts from above. Black-and-white photographs and films showed miners in hard hats and soiled uniforms as they stood smoking cigarettes, climbing into open rail cars and running machinery that scooped and loaded piles of rocks.Crews on another hulking piece of equipment, called a jumbo, used compressed-air drills to bore dozens of holes, which were packed with blasting power and detonated to pierce the rock. (Courtesy of Metropolitan Water District of Southern California) The work progressed slowly, growing complicated when the miners struck underground streams, which sent water gushing in.According to a 1991 history of the MWD titled “A Water Odyssey,” one flood in 1934 disabled two of three pumps that had been brought in to clear the tunnel. In another sudden flood, an engineer recalled that “the water came in with a big, mad rush and filled the shaft to the top. Miners scrambled up the 800-foot ladder to the surface, and the last man out made it with water swirling around his waist.”Death and delaysAccording to the MWD’s records, 13 workers died during the tunnel’s construction, including men who were struck by falling rocks, run over by equipment or electrocuted with a wire on one of the mining trolleys that rolled on railroad tracks. The Metropolitan Water District had originally hired Wenzel & Henoch Construction Co. to build the tunnel. But after less than two years, only about two miles of the tunnel had been excavated, and the contractor was fired by MWD general manager Frank Elwin “F.E.” Weymouth, who assigned the district’s engineers and workers to complete the project.Construction was delayed again in 1937 when workers went on strike for six weeks. But in 1939, the last wall of rock tumbled down, uniting the east and west tunnels, and the tunnel was finished. John Bednarski, assistant general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, stands in a water tunnel near the end point of the larger San Jacinto Tunnel, which carries Colorado River water. The total cost was $23.5 million. But there also were other costs. As the construction work drained water, many nearby springs used by the Native Soboba people stopped flowing. The drying of springs and creeks left the tribe’s members without water and starved their farms, which led to decades of litigation by the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians and eventually a legal settlement in 2008 that resolved the tribe’s water rights claims.The ‘magic touch’ of waterBy the time the tunnel was completed, the Metropolitan Water District had released a 20-minute film that was shown in movie theaters and schools celebrating its conquest of the Colorado River and the desert. It called Mt. San Jacinto the “tallest and most forbidding barrier.”In a rich baritone, the narrator declared Southern California “a new empire made possible by the magic touch of water.” “Water required to support this growth and wealth could not be obtained from the local rainfall in this land of sunshine,” the narrator said as the camera showed newly built homes and streets filled with cars and buses. “The people therefore realized that a new and dependable water supply must be provided, and this new water supply has been found on the lofty western slopes of the Rocky Mountains, a wonderland of beauty, clad by nature in a white mantle of snow.”Water began to flow through the aqueduct in 1939 as the pumping plants were tested. At the Julian Hinds Pumping Plant, near the aqueduct’s halfway point, water was lifted 441 feet, surging through three pipelines up a desert mountain. March 2012 image of the 10-foot-diameter delivery lines carrying water 441 feet uphill from the Julian Hinds Pumping Plant. (Los Angeles Times) From there, the water flowed by gravity, moving at 3-6 mph as it traveled through pipelines, siphons and tunnels. It entered the San Jacinto Tunnel in Cabazon, passed under the mountain and emerged near the city of San Jacinto, then continued in pipelines to Lake Mathews reservoir in Riverside County. In 1941, Colorado River water started flowing to Pasadena, Beverly Hills, Compton and other cities. Within six years, another pipeline was built to transport water from the aqueduct south to San Diego.The influx of water fueled Southern California’s rapid growth during and after World War II.Over decades, the dams and increased diversions also took an environmental toll, drying up much of the once-vast wetlands in Mexico’s Colorado River Delta. John Bednarski, assistant general manager of the Metropolitan Water District, walks in a water tunnel near the end point of the larger San Jacinto Tunnel. An impressive designToday, 19 million people depend on water delivered by the MWD, which also imports supplies from Northern California through the aqueducts and pipelines of the State Water Project.In recent decades, the agency has continued boring tunnels where needed to move water. A $1.2-billion, 44-mile-long conveyance system called the Inland Feeder, completed in 2009, involved boring eight miles of tunnels through the San Bernardino Mountains and another 7.9-mile tunnel under the Badlands in Riverside County.The system enabled the district to increase its capacity and store more water during wet years in Diamond Valley Lake, Southern California’s largest reservoir, which can hold about 260 billion gallons of water. “Sometimes tunneling is actually the most effective way to get from point A to point B,” said Deven Upadhyay, the MWD’s general manager.Speaking hypothetically, Upadhyay said, if engineers had another shot at designing and building the aqueduct now using modern technology, it’s hard to say if they would end up choosing the same route through Mt. San Jacinto or a different route around it. But the focus on minimizing cost might yield a similar route, he said.“Even to this day, it’s a pretty impressive design,” Upadhyay said.When people drive past on the I-10 in Cabazon, few realize that a key piece of infrastructure lies hidden where the desert meets the base of the mountain. At the tunnel’s exit point near San Jacinto, the only visible signs of the infrastructure are several concrete structures resembling bunkers. When the aqueduct is running, those who enter the facility will hear the rumble of rushing water. The tunnel’s west end was opened to a group of visitors in March, when the district’s managers held an event to name the tunnel in honor of Randy Record, who served on the MWD board for two decades and was chair from 2014 to 2018. Speaking to an audience, Upadhyay reflected on the struggles the region now faces as the Colorado River is sapped by drought and global warming, and he drew a parallel to the challenges the tunnel’s builders overcame in the 1930s. “They found a path,” Upadhyay said. “This incredible engineering feat. And it required strength, courage and really an innovative spirit.” “When we now think about the challenges that we face today, dealing with wild swings in climate and the potential reductions that we might face, sharing dwindling supplies on our river systems with the growing Southwest, it’s going to require the same thing — strength, courage and a spirit of innovation,” he said. A steep steel staircase gives access to a water tunnel near the end point of the larger San Jacinto Tunnel, which carries Colorado River water to Southern California.

Water

Mountains

Government

Officials to Test Water From Ohio Village Near Cold War-Era Weapons Plant After Newspaper Probe

Authorities in Ohio plan to test the water supply across a small village near a former weapons plant after a newspaper investigation published Friday found high levels of radioactivity in samples taken at a school, athletic field, library and other sites

LUCKEY, Ohio (AP) — Authorities in Ohio plan to test the groundwater supply across a village near a former weapons plant after a newspaper investigation published Friday found high levels of radioactivity in samples taken at a school, athletic field, library and other sites.However, The Blade in Toledo said its tests showed radioactivity levels 10 times higher than normal in water from a drinking fountain at Eastwood Middle School, 45 times higher than normal at the Luckey Library and 1,731 times higher than normal at a water pump near athletic fields.“We’ve got to get to the bottom of this,” said Lt. Col. Robert Burnham, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Buffalo District, which oversees the cleanup.Nineteen of the 39 samples collected by the newspaper from well water across Luckey — at homes, businesses, and public places — showed radioactivity at least 10 times greater than what the federal government calls normal for the area, the newspaper said. The Blade hired an accredited private lab to conduct the testing.The radioactivity detected was primarily bismuth-214, which decays from the radioactive gas radon-222. Experts agree that high levels of bismuth-214 suggest high levels of radon are also present.Radon exposure is the leading cause of lung cancer in nonsmokers.The testing also found low levels of radioactive cobalt-60, a man-made isotope, in two wells. Experts called that finding extremely rare.Taehyun Roh, a Texas A&M University scientist who specializes in environmental exposures, said regulators should also conduct air and soil testing to assess the extent of the contamination and identify the source."Since this area likely has high radon levels, testing for radon in both air and water is advisable,” he wrote in an email. “A safe drinking water advisory should be issued, recommending the use of bottled water until further assessments and mitigation measures are in place.”The Corps of Engineers has long maintained that residential drinking water was not being contaminated by the removal work. Burnham and others said they still believe that to be true, citing thousands of their own soil samples.The state Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Health will lead the testing. In an email, Ohio EPA spokesperson Katie Boyer told the newspaper the contaminant levels in the public drinking water are still “within acceptable drinking water standards.” She said any concerns raised by the state testing would be addressed.The 44-acre industrial site — 22 miles (35 kilometers) south of Toledo — was long crucial to America’s nuclear weapons program. In the 1940s, farmland was replaced by a sprawling defense plant that produced magnesium metal for the Manhattan Project. In the 1950s, the plant became the government’s sole source of beryllium metal for nuclear bombs, Cold War missiles and Space Race products, including a heat shield for Project Mercury.“Things that happened generations ago are still affecting us,” said Karina Hahn-Claydon, a 50-year-old teacher whose family lives less than a mile from the site. “And that’s because the government didn’t take care of it.”Private drinking wells, unlike municipal systems, are not regulated, and responsibility for testing is left to owners. The Blade’s testing took place from April 2024 through January.Radioactivity has been linked to an increased risk of various cancers, including blood and thyroid cancers.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

Water

Business

Health

UK spending watchdog censures water firms and regulators over sewage failings

NAO finds regulatory gaps have enabled overspending on infrastructure building while not improving sewage worksWater companies have been getting away with failures to improve sewage works and overspending because of regulatory problems, a damning report by the government’s spending watchdog has found.Firms have overspent on infrastructure building, the National Audit Office (NAO) found, with some of these costs being added to consumers’ bills. The Guardian this week reported Ofwat and the independent water commission are investigating water firms for spending up to 10 times as much on their sewage works and piping as comparable countries. Continue reading...

Water companies have been getting away with failures to improve sewage works and overspending because of regulatory problems, a damning report by the government’s spending watchdog has found.Firms have overspent on infrastructure building, the National Audit Office (NAO) found, with some of these costs being added to consumers’ bills. The Guardian this week reported Ofwat and the independent water commission are investigating water firms for spending up to 10 times as much on their sewage works and piping as comparable countries.Bills in England and Wales are rising by £123 on average this year, and will go up further over the next five years, so that companies can fix ageing sewage infrastructure and stop spills of human waste from contaminating rivers and seas. Several water firms have complained to the Competition and Markets Authority because they want the regulator to allow them to increase bills even further.Only 1% of water companies’ actions to improve environmental performance, such as improving sewer overflows, have been inspected by the Environment Agency, the authors of the NAO report said. They also found there was no regulator responsible for proactively inspecting wastewater assets to prevent further environmental harm.The report, which audited the three water regulators, Ofwat, the Environment Agency, and the Drinking Water Inspectorate, as well as the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, also found the regulators did not have a good understanding of the condition of infrastructure assets such as leaking sewers and ageing sewage treatment facilities as they do not have a set of metrics to assess their condition.Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: “Given the unprecedented situation facing the sector, Defra and the regulators need to act urgently to address industry performance and resilience to ensure the sector can meet government targets and achieve value for money over the long term for bill payers.”Despite the huge costs of infrastructure, the water companies have moved slowly meaning that at the current rate, it would take 700 years to replace the entire existing water network, the report found. Regulatory gaps and a lack of urgency about replacing old and malfunctioning infrastructure has caused a “rising tide of risk” in the sector, which is contributing to increasing bills for customers, the report warned.It also criticised the lack of a national plan for water supply and recommended that Defra must understand the costs and deliverability of its plans, alongside the impact they would have on customers’ bills.Several of the issues raised by the NAO, including concerns about weak infrastructure, have come to the fore in the debate over the future of Thames Water, the country’s largest water company with 16 million customers. Thames, which is under significant financial pressure with almost £20bn in debt, needs to secure fresh investment within months. Questions over the state of Thames’s infrastructure and regulatory punishment it could face for its failures have dogged the process of winning fresh funds. Meanwhile, Ofwat has also rejected its requests to raise bills by as much as 59%, instead allowing a 35% increase over the next five years.The government set up the independent water commission (IWC) last year to investigate how the water industry operated and whether regulation was fit for purpose.Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the Tory chair of the Commons public accounts committee, said: “Today’s NAO report lays bare the scale of the challenges facing the water sector – not least the real prospect of water shortfall without urgent action.“The consequences of government’s failure to regulate this sector properly are now landing squarely on bill payers who are being left to pick up the tab. After years of under-investment, pollution incidents and water supply issues, it is no surprise that consumer trust is at an all-time low. Having not built any reservoirs in the last 30 years, we now need 10.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion“Consumers rightly expect a water sector that is robust, resilient and fit for the future. Defra and the regulators must focus on rebuilding public confidence and ensure the sector can attract the long-term investment it desperately needs.”An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “We recognise the significant challenges facing the water industry. That is why we will be working with Defra and other water regulators to implement the report’s recommendations and update our frameworks to reflect its findings.”An Ofwat spokesperson added: “We agree with the NAO’s recommendations for Ofwat and we continue to progress our work in these areas, and to contribute to the IWC wider review of the regulatory framework. We also look forward to the IWC’s recommendations and to working with government and other regulators to better deliver for customers and the environment.”A Defra spokesperson said: “The government has taken urgent action to fix the water industry – but change will not happen overnight. We have put water companies under tough special measures through our landmark Water Act.”Water UK, which represents the water companies, has been contacted for comment.

Water

Government

Food

Water firms admit sewage monitoring damaging public trust

The industry says powers to self-monitor water quality should be handed back to the regulator.

Water companies should no longer be allowed to monitor their own levels of sewage pollution, the industry body has told the BBC exclusively.Instead they are proposing a new, third-party monitoring system to build consumer trust.The recommendation is part of a submission made to the UK government's independent review into the water sector.Campaigners have long complained the companies' self-reporting has prevented the true scale of pollution in UK water being revealed.A third-party system could add more pressure to the regulators, which have also been criticised for not holding the companies to account. A report from the National Audit Office is expected to say on Friday that the Environment Agency does not currently have enough capacity to take on any new monitoring.David Henderson, CEO of industry body Water UK, told the BBC: "We absolutely accept that self-monitoring is not helping to instil trust and so we would like to see an end to it, and in place of it a more robust, third-party system." As part of their permitting arrangements water companies are expected to regularly sample water quality to identify potential pollution, and submit this data to the Environment Agency in an arrangement known as "operator self monitoring". But there have been incidents of misreporting by water companies in England and Wales uncovered by the regulators, who said some cases had been deliberate.Southern Water was previously issued fines totalling £213m by the industry regulator (Ofwat) and the environmental regulator (the Environment Agency) for manipulating sewage data.In that case, there was unreported pollution into numerous conservation sites which caused "major environmental harm" to wildlife.The company later admitted its actions "fell short".Henderson added that the industry never asked to self-monitor, but that it was introduced in 2009 by the then Labour government to "reduce the administrative burden" on the Environment Agency (EA). In 2023, the BBC reported that EA staff were concerned that, due to funding cuts, the Agency was increasingly relying on water companies to self-report rather than carrying out its own checks on pollution from sewage. The current environment minister, Steve Reed, has promised to review the system, calling it the equivalent of companies "mark[ing] their own homework".But the National Audit Office (NAO), which reviews government spending, questioned the ability of the EA to take on any new monitoring. "Regulators need to address the fact that they currently have limited oversight over whether water companies are carrying out their work as expected. It is hard to see how they will achieve this without increased overall capacity," said Anita Shah, NAO Director of Regulation.It is expected to publish a full review of the regulation of the water sector on Friday. A Defra spokesperson told the BBC: "We are committed to taking decisive action to fix the water industry. The Water Commission's recommendations will mark the next major step [to] restore public trust in the sector."The government launched an independent water commission in October to review the sector and the way it is regulated. The public consultation closed on Wednesday with the findings expected in July. Water UK submitted a 200-page document of recommendations, including this call to end self-monitoring.The industry body also requested that water meters be universal across England and Wales to make bills fairer. At present about 60% of the population have a meter."The meter is just to ensure that people are paying for what they use as opposed to a flat rate of system where you can use virtually no water and pay the same as someone filling up a pool three times in a summer," said Henderson."This doesn't properly reflect the value of water and encourage people to conserve it in the way that we need," he added.

Water

Conservation

Pollution

Cambodia Canal's Impact on Mekong Questioned After China Signs Deal

By Francesco Guarascio(Reuters) -Cambodia should share a feasibility study on the impact of a planned China-backed canal that would divert water...

(Reuters) -Cambodia should share a feasibility study on the impact of a planned China-backed canal that would divert water from the rice-growing floodplains of Vietnam's Mekong Delta, said the body overseeing the transnational river.After months of uncertainty, Phnom Penh last week signed a deal with China to develop the Funan Techo Canal when President Xi Jinping visited Cambodia as part of a tour of Southeast Asia.It was Beijing's first explicit public commitment to the project, giving state-controlled construction giant China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) a 49% stake through a subsidiary, but also linking Chinese support to the "sustainability" of the project.The Secretariat of the intergovernmental Mekong River Commission (MRC) that coordinates the sustainable development of Southeast Asia's longest river said it had so far received from Cambodia only "basic information" on the project."We hope that further details, including the feasibility study report and other relevant reports, will be provided," the Commission said in a statement to Reuters this week.That would be needed "to ensure that any potential implications for the broader Mekong Basin are fully considered," it added.The canal has already created concern among environmentalists who say it could further harm the delicate ecology of the Mekong Delta, which is Vietnam's major rice growing region and is already facing problems of drought and salination as result of infrastructure projects upstream. Vietnam is also a leading exporter of rice.On Friday, the Cambodian government said the canal would have minimal environmental impact and "aligns with the 1995 Mekong Agreement" which governs cooperation among riverine countries in Southeast Asia.The Mekong River, fed by a series of tributaries, flows some 4,900 kilometres (3,045 miles) from its source in the Tibetan plateau through China, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to the sea."Whether the Funan Techo Canal violates the 1995 Mekong Agreement depends on several factors, including its connection to the Mekong mainstream," the Commission said, offering additional guidance to Phnom Penh and other member states "to ensure compliance".Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam are members of the MRC while China and Myanmar are dialogue partners.The Cambodian government did not respond to questions about whether it intended to share the requested documents.Vietnam's foreign ministry did not reply to a request for comment after the deal with China was signed, but the country has repeatedly asked Cambodia to share more information about the canal to assess its impact.Xi made no reference to the canal in his public statements in Phnom Penh but a joint communique issued at the end of his visit said China supported Cambodia in building the canal "in accordance with the principles of feasibility and sustainability".The deal signed by CCCC on Friday was for a 151.6 km (94.2 miles) canal costing $1.16 billion.However, the Cambodian government says on the canal's official website that the waterway would stretch 180 km and cost $1.7 billion at completion in 2028.The higher cost reflects a short section to be built by Cambodian firms as well as bridges and water conservation resources, the government told Reuters without clarifying who would pay for the bridges and water conservation.Cambodia's deputy prime minister said in May 2024 that China would cover the entire cost of the project, which was put at $1.7 billion.The canal is designed to link the Mekong Basin to the Gulf of Thailand in Cambodia's southern Kep province. Much of the Mekong's nutrient-rich sediment no longer reaches rice farms in the Delta because of multiple hydroelectric dams built by China upriver, a Reuters analysis showed in 2022.The project agreed with China is also different from the original plan as it is focusing on boosting irrigation rather than solely pursuing navigation purposes, said Brian Eyler, an expert on the Mekong region at U.S.-based think tank Stimson Center.The water diverted from the Mekong Delta "will be much more than previously described," said Eyler.(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; additional reporting by Khanh Vu in Hanoi; Editing by Kate Mayberry)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

Water

Conservation

Sustainable

Suggested Viewing

Destitute Living

Two friends live in the Qubaibah village Northwest of Al-Quds (Jerusalem).Those young men are forced to leave their daily life concerns after the water was cut off from their area two weeks ago by the Israeli occupation closing the feeding line.Those two characters go on a dangerous journey to an area close to their village to try to reach the water spring captured by the Israeli military occupation as they took over the land, sky, and air in Palestine. On their journey, some things happen that change the course of events with an unexpected end.

Culture

Water

Fiction

Keeper of the Creek

“If you’ve ever thought ‘Someone should do something about that litter problem’, remember, you’re someone.” Joel Goldes has visited the creek in his suburban Southern California community nearly every day. And for the past 10 years, he’s been picking up litter, trapping invasive crayfish, opening blocked channels, and testifying at local hearings – often the lone voice in support of the under-appreciated ecosystem near his home.

Waste

Water

Inspirational

Fish

An old couple are living in an apartment, the man is sleeping and the woman is doing housework. The lady wants to change the fishbowl’s water but it slips out of her hand and falls on the ground. They've ran out of water and there’s no water for the fish. But with the help of the man they find water.

Water

Culture

Fiction