Tag: Eastern US

Study: A 20-Foot Sea Wall? Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change.

New York Times: A 20-Foot Sea Wall? Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change. A proposal to construct barriers for storm surge protection has forced South Floridians to reckon with the many environmental challenges they face.

Three years ago, not long after Hurricane Irma left parts of Miami underwater, the federal government embarked on a study to find a way to protect the vulnerable South Florida coast from deadly and destructive storm surge.

Already, no one likes the answer.

Build a wall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed in its first draft of the study, now under review. Six miles of it, in fact, mostly inland, running parallel to the coast through neighborhoods — except for a one-mile stretch right on Biscayne Bay, past the gleaming sky-rises of Brickell, the city’s financial district.

The Daily Climate, April 23, 2021

Articles include: GHG commitments from Biden; Miami sea level rise costs; Steel company and GHG goals; Texas and clean energy; clean energy loan risks; humanity’s friend against climate change; bitcoin and the environment; Canada’s biggest banks missing from net-zero pledge; Study: dangerous toxins in Alaska’s algae; Study: ocean currents are changing; farmers and climate change; homelessness in America.

The Daily Climate, April 15, 2021

Articles include: 2050 Goals are inadequate; champagne & climate change; 100% clean power; renewable energy powers decarbonization; electric vehicles by 2035; Interior Department and Manchin; Epic Drought; Indian monsoon season; ticks moving into the Arctic; East African oil pipeline; American research station abandoned; food web in the Great Lakes.

The Daily Climate, April 12, 2021

Articles include: Flood survivors; Biden’s infrastructure plan; California expands O&G drilling; battery makers; Canadian energy jobs; nuclear power plant shutting down; Russia & the arctic; Maine laws & solar investment; Brazil; home buying and climate change; offshore wind; Navajo farmers.

The Daily Climate, April 7, 2021

Articles include: Gretta Thunberg; racism; green goals and the power grid; old batteries & electric vehicles; outdated rainfall data; Canadian coal mine; sea meadows; Chevron climate goals; Antarctic ice shelves collapse; Florida & sea level rise.

The Coast-to-Coast Battle Over Rooftop Solar

Inside Climate News: Inside Clean Energy: The Coast-to-Coast Battle Over Rooftop Solar. As California works on a new net metering policy, other states are grappling with similar issues.

A debate over how best to compensate rooftop solar owners is taking place across the country.

In California, the country’s leading solar market, regulators are working on changes to rooftop solar rules, while utilities and solar advocates are trying to position themselves to shape the process to their liking.

Many of the other policy fights are happening in places where rooftop solar is at the margins, and utilities would like to keep it there.

Study: Algal blooms – 2 articles

Environmental Health News: Algal blooms target sea otter hearts. A toxin formed during algal blooms, which are increasingly common due to climate change, leaves sea otters at risk of deadly heart disease. Within the past decade, those working on the frontlines of marine health have treated an unprecedented number of animals poisoned by harmful algal blooms. Jayme Smith, the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project’s harmful algal bloom expert, was an undergraduate student at Vanguard University of Southern California working with sea lions at a local marine mammal rehabilitation center when she consistently saw these devastating impacts. “It’s really heartbreaking,” Smith told EHN. “A lot of times it’s the adult female sea lions and they’re in really bad condition, they have seizures, and a lot of times they can’t recover.” The culprit behind these episodes: domoic acid. This biotoxin accumulates in the food web during algal bloom events and causes severe health effects in larger animals, humans included. Now, researchers warn that the potent toxin targets the hearts of sea otters, threatening already sensitive populations, according to a recent study in the Harmful Algae journal.

The Conversation: Water being pumped into Tampa Bay could cause a massive algae bloom, putting fragile manatee and fish habitats at risk. Millions of gallons of water laced with fertilizer ingredients are being pumped into Florida’s Tampa Bay from a leaking reservoir at an abandoned phosphate plant at Piney Point. As the water spreads into the bay, it carries phosphorus and nitrogen – nutrients that under the right conditions can fuel dangerous algae blooms that can suffocate sea grass beds and kill fish, dolphins and manatees. It’s the kind of risk no one wants to see, but officials believed the other options were worse.

 

Florida Crisis Highlights a Nationwide Risk From Toxic Ponds

New York Times: Florida Crisis Highlights a Nationwide Risk From Toxic Ponds. Thousands of open-air waste pools near power plants, mines and industrial farms can pose safety dangers from poor management and, increasingly, the effects of climate change.

They are ponds the size of city blocks: Wastewater pits that hold the hazardous byproducts of coal. Lagoons brimming with diluted pig excrement. Vast pools atop stacks of radioactive tailings.

The risks posed by pools of waste like these, a common feature at thousands of industrial and agricultural sites across the country, have been brought into sharp relief by a giant wastewater pond in Piney Point, Fla., that in recent days had appeared in danger of catastrophic failure.

Officials on Monday said the threat of collapse had passed and residents were allowed to return home after an emergency effort had pumped millions of gallons of water out of the pond and into local waterways. The environmental effects of such a large release of contaminated water remained unknown. This past weekend, the specter of a deluge had prompted the authorities to evacuate hundreds of people from their homes.

600 manatee deaths in Florida raise concerns over sustainable habitat

The Hill: 600 manatee deaths in Florida raise concerns over sustainable habitat.

Environmentalists are increasingly concerned about the sustainability of Florida’s waterways after the deaths of more than 600 manatees so far this year, three times the average rate.

Biologists with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) Commission first started raising concerns in December when manatees began dying in the Indian River Lagoon Area, one of the most biodiverse estuaries in the Northern Hemisphere and home to nearly one-third of the nation’s manatee population.

The following month, the agency noticed something else strange — a large portion of the manatees rescued from the Indian River Lagoon and down to the waters of Miami were found swimming sideways. According to behavioral ecologist and senior research scientist Monica Ross, that usually indicates a manatee has made contact with a boat or other human-made object.

Tampa Bay stares down environmental disaster

Axios: Tampa Bay stares down environmental disaster.

A worsening series of breaches in a 800-million-gallon holding pool at the Piney Point industrial site prompted Manatee County to evacuate residents within about a mile of the plant tonight.

  • The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Highway Patrol closed off roads in the evacuation zone around U.S. 41 in Palmetto, per the Bradenton Herald, and the Red Cross has been called in to assist.

The latest: Acting Manatee County administrator Scott Hopes addressed reporters at a press conference around 9:20pm.

  • Hopes said the water being discharged into Tampa Bay — at the rate of 22,000 gallons per minute, or 32 million gallons per day — is acidic and smells of ammonia, but said the pool supported wildlife like snook and ducks.