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How Coal Mining Degrades Water Quality

Excerpted from an article by Ellen Montgomery of Environment America

Beyond headwater stream loss, mountaintop removal has severe impacts on water quality that can persist for decades post-mining. According to a report by the EPA, water quality degradation from mountaintop mines and valley fills can reach levels fatally toxic to wildlife. Valley fills drastically increase salinity and metal concentrations downstream, endangering sensitive organisms such as salamanders and certain fish species.

Of all the watershed degradation issues in coal mining areas, acid mine drainage is one of the most serious. Acid mine drainage (AMD) occurs when water reacts with sulfur-bearing minerals in rocks, resulting in highly acidic water that contains toxic heavy metals. It poses a severe threat to wildlife and renders affected waterways unusable for drinking and recreation. In some areas, the water flowing from coal mines can burn your skin because it is so acidic.

AMD can also turn the water an alarming orange or red color — a widespread problem in central Appalachia, where many streams are tainted with orange, acidic water. Acid mine drainage is a significant water quality issue in the US, where it degrades approximately 12,400 miles of rivers and streams, posing health risks to ecosystems and nearby communities.

Environment America

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Gazette Introductory Note: Clearly, the idea that fluoride lowers children’s IQ isn’t new. The significance of this report is that it “marks the first time a federal agency has determined there is a link” between fluoride consumption and lower IQ in children.  

“Since fluoride is such an important topic to the public and to public health officials, it was imperative that we made every effort to get the science right,” Rick Woychik, director of the National Toxicology Program, told the AP in explaining the length of time it took to complete the report.

Source: US News and World Report

See also “Study Links Fluoridated Water to Lower IQs in Babies” from a 2019 Gazette report.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Groundwater Could Be Too Hot to Drink for 75 Million People by 2100

Gazette Note: The short Newsweek article below addresses a seldom-mentioned aspect of rising temperatures: its effect on water quality. 

Access to groundwater is crucial to life on Earth, but rising temperatures could render it undrinkable for 75 million people within the next 76 years.

In a new study, researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) based their projections on two climate scenarios, SSP 2–4.5 and SSP 5–8.5, which represent different socioeconomic pathways and greenhouse gas concentrations. SSP 2–4.5 falls in the midrange of future greenhouse gas trends, while SSP 5–8.5 represents the upper extreme.The study indicates that by 2100, groundwater temperatures will rise by 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit in one scenario and 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the other.

“Our results show how important it is to take action to protect groundwater and find lasting solutions to counteract the negative impact of climate change on groundwater,” study author Dr. Susanne Benz, from the Institute of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing at KIT, said in a statement.

“Depending on the scenario, as many as several hundred million people could be affected by 2100. There are already about 30 million people living in regions where the groundwater is warmer than stipulated in the strictest drinking water guidelines,” Benz said.

“That means it may not be safe to drink the water there without treatment. It may need to be boiled first, for example. The drinking water also gets warmed up in water pipes by heat in the ground.”

The research suggests that by 2100, due to varying climate changes and population trends, anywhere from 77 to 188 million people could be affected by SSP 2–4.5 and 59 to 588 million under SSP 5–8.5.

The temperature of groundwater plays a crucial role in water quality by influencing chemical, biological, and physical processes. Warmer groundwater also affects groundwater-dependent ecosystems, aquatic biogeochemical processes, geothermal energy potential, and river thermal regimes. Moreover, it poses challenges to biodiversity and risks to carbon and nutrient cycles.

“Under certain conditions, rising groundwater temperatures can lead to increasing concentrations of harmful substances like arsenic or manganese. These higher concentrations can have a negative impact on human health, especially when groundwater is used as drinking water,” Benz said.

Earth’s climate is warming as greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, limiting its release. Oceans absorb much of this heat, yet soil and groundwater also serve as significant reservoirs for thermal energy.

Source: Newsweek. 

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Using Water: What It Means

Water use is unique as an environmental issue because recycling is built into the system.  With water, we recycle whether we want to or not. Someone said that unless water leaves the planet, it is never wasted. That’s why saying that a reverse osmosis unit “wastes water” makes no sense. More correctly, a reverse osmosis unit uses water, much in the same way that a dishwasher or a lawn sprinkler uses water.  A reverse osmosis unit doesn’t send the water to Mars; it uses it to rinse away impurities, then sends it down the drain to be eventually reused. Maybe next week, maybe after a thousand years. That’s what your clothes washer does, but we seldom hear people denounce washing machines for “wasting” water.

With water, the issue is often more about saving energy than saving water, since using water usually also involves using energy. A Pacific Institute study on the environmental consequences of the bottled water consumption concluded that “bottled water is up to 2000 times more energy-intensive than tap water. Similarly, bottled water that requires long-distance transport is far more energy-intensive than bottled water produced and distributed locally.”  And we aren’t talking about small amounts of energy.  The Pacific study estimated that between 32 and 54 million barrels of oil were used in bottled water production, packaging and delivery in 2007 in the U.S. alone.

We now have 333,000,000 Americans sharing essentially the same amount of fresh water that was once shared by 4,000,000 Americans.  Although we aren’t sending any water to Mars, we’re overusing it to the point that we are disrupting natural cycles.  For example, we’re extracting ground water much faster than the natural process can replenish it and, as our generation has done with all our natural resources, we are stealing water from the future.  It’s no small thing when the Nestle Corp. pumps the groundwater supply of a small community dry in order to truck the water to remote points for sale at a markup of hundreds of times what they paid for it.  It will take generations for the natural hydrological cycle to restore the groundwater.  The short-sighted city council that sells water rights to meet its current expenses has stolen from the future.

Adapted from the Pure Water Occasional, July 20, 2009.

PWO 0824

Water News for July 2024

A large number of lawsuits in courts around the world are holding governments and corporations to account for their treatment of the seas and those who rely on them. There have been more than 2,500 lawsuits relating to the climate crisis around the world – and many relate to the ocean. The Guardian.

A new study ranks Lake Louise in Florida as the cleanest lake in the U.S. The prize for the dirtiest goes to Utah Lake, Utah’s largest freshwater lake. Find out who the other winners and losers are on the Gazette’s website.

The city council of Girard, OH passed an ordinance requiring fencing around Koi ponds, not to keep the fish in but to keep children out. The law was occasioned by the near drowning of a toddler in a Koi pond.

July 21 was the hottest day ever recorded on Earth. It broke the previous record established on July 20, one day earlier. Full article in The Guardian.

Inflation Reduction Act

On July 25, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced more than $325 million in funding for 21 selected applications to help disadvantaged communities tackle environmental and climate justice challenges through projects that reduce pollution, increase community climate resilience and build community capacity. Much of this goes directly to projects that improve water quality. Made possible by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the Community Change Grants Program is the single largest investment in environmental and climate justice in history. The funding announcement today is the first tranche of nearly $2 billion from the program that was designed based on community input to award grants on a rolling basis.

Gazette’s Comment: In an age of political overstatement and exaggeration, it’s easy to overlook something really significant. The Inflation Reduction Act is a big deal. It will have a positive impact on the lives of Americans and on the health of our environment for decades to come. If you would like to read the EPA’s recent bulletin, it’s on the Gazette’s website.

PFAS and Pesticides

A peer-reviewed study published in late July in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives has found that per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, known as “forever chemicals,” are increasingly being added to U.S. pesticide products, contaminating waterways and posing potential threats to human health.

The study, “Forever Pesticides: A Growing Source of PFAS Contamination in the Environment,” is the first-ever comprehensive review of the many ways PFAS are introduced into U.S. pesticide products. Pesticides containing PFAS are used throughout the country on staple foods such as corn, wheat, kale, spinach, apples and strawberries. They are widely used in residences in flea treatments for pets and insect-killing sprays.

Researchers at the Center for Biological Diversity, or CBD, Environmental Working Group and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, compiled data on sources of PFAS in pesticide products. Those sources range from specific ingredients intentionally added to pesticides, to contamination via leaching from fluorinated storage containers. Full report from Water Online.

Water in the Seine.  The Olympics.

Water quality in the Seine has been touch and go during the Olympics, largely because of above-average rainfall. The E. coli test required by European standards was passed on most days but not all.  (Swimming in the Seine has been banned for over a century. Since 2015, Olympics organizers have invested $1.5 billion to prepare the Seine for the Olympics and to ensure Parisians have a cleaner river after the Games. The plan included constructing a giant underground water storage basin in central Paris, renovating sewer infrastructure and upgrading wastewater treatment plants.)

Greening the Desert Isn’t Always a Good Idea

Shortly after Egypt’s president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi came to power in a military coup in 2014, he announced an ambitious – and controversial – project to transform 6,487 sq miles of desert into farmland before 2027. But with a huge water deficit, critics doubt the project, which is rapidly depleting water from Egypt’s groundwater reserves, is viable. Water under the Western desert is being depleted twice as fast since Sisi took office in Egypt.  More.

More Than Half of Contiguous U.S. River Water Comes from Ephemeral Streams

New research published in Science underlines the importance of regulating “ephemeral streams,” which supply half the water for our rivers.  A very questionable 2023 Supreme Court decision favored polluters by taking away the EPA’s ability to regulate the part-time streams.  Details in this excellent article from the Gazette’s website.

More Than Half of Contiguous U.S. River Water Comes from Ephemeral Streams

Of the roughly 600,000 cubic feet (17,000 cubic meters) of water that spills each second from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, half comes from streams that don’t even exist for part of the year.

So-called ephemeral streams, which sit above the water table, supply 51% of the Mississippi’s water. That’s on par with the average for U.S. rivers, according to a new study published in Science. This is one of the first times the role of ephemeral streams in contributing to downstream flows has been quantified, and the analysis comes at a pivotal moment for regulations around these kinds of less obvious waterways.

Following a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision, EPA and other federal bodies lost their authority to regulate some kinds of waters within the United States, including most ephemeral streams. Critics of the ruling say this could leave even still-regulated rivers and lakes vulnerable, as smaller bodies of water feed into them. But hard numbers on what those contributions are have often been lacking. This new study helps to change that.

“There are exponentially more headwaters and ephemeral streams than there are large rivers,” said Adam Ward, a hydrologist at Oregon State University who wasn’t affiliated with the research. “By demonstrating how much of the water comes from those, it gives us a context for how important they will be to regulation of environmental quality.”

Only Sometimes a Stream

Ephemeral streams sit above the water table, meaning they are fed only by precipitation. That means most sit dry for stretches of time—some in the arid southwestern United States flow only a few days each year, on average.

To find these on-again, off-again waterways, the study’s authors took an existing map of stream channels in the contiguous United States and overlaid it on a groundwater model. By excluding streams that dipped below the modeled average level of groundwater, they were able to pick out most ephemeral streams. Then they validated a portion of those streams with existing site assessment data to make sure their model was accurate.

Their data showed that 55% of the water coming from rivers in the contiguous United States begins in ephemeral streams, though large regional variations exist. The percentage of river flow derived from ephemeral streams is much higher in the West than the East, for example, and very low overall in the upper Midwest, where the water table is shallow.

The results underline the fact that ephemeral streams are an important factor in water flow across the country, said Craig Brinkerhoff, a hydrologist at Yale University and the study’s lead author.

“We usually think ephemeral streams are characteristic of the desert,” he said. But trace river headwaters back far enough in many places, and you’ll find seasonally dry gullies that become streams only when rain falls.

How Far Does the Clean Water Act Extend?

This new quantification of where the water in major waterways originates has implications for a long-standing debate about which waters federal agencies such as EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers (which issues permits for development work near bodies of water) can regulate.

The Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, is the primary federal law governing water quality in the United States. But which bodies of water the law covers has long been a subject of debate. Part of that confusion stems from a 2006 Supreme Court case that said it applied only to “relatively permanent, standing or flowing bodies of water” and wetlands with a “continuous surface connection” to them. A concurring opinion from Justice Anthony Kennedy left the door open to waters with a “significant nexus” to those covered waters, an imprecise definition that allowed federal agencies to extend protections more broadly.

In 2023, the Supreme Court revisited the matter in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, this time removing the “significant nexus” language and narrowing the law’s scope to just relatively permanent bodies of water such as rivers and lakes, as well as those with a continuous surface connection to them. That means that ephemeral streams, which are not, by definition, “relatively permanent,” don’t count.

Brinkerhoff argued the new research shows we may need that more expansive definition, however. With half the water in rivers coming from ephemeral steams, significant amounts of pollution resulting from under-regulation could come with it.

“All of the systems are connected,” he said. “If you turn regulation on and off, you can still end up with water in nominally regulated water bodies that might have come from an unregulated place.”

The research doesn’t alter the definition of an ephemeral stream, but by quantifying how much water these streams contribute to protected bodies, it does highlight their significance in a way that could cause lawmakers to take note, Ward said.

“They can see very clearly now [that] more than half of the water in the rivers they intended to protect originates in ephemeral streams and headwaters,” he said. “It seems a logical outcome of that would be to explicitly say, protect the ephemeral streams and headwaters.”

Reprinted from Eos.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Biden-Harris Administration Announces More Than $325 Million in Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change Grants

EPA announces initial selections from $2 billion Inflation Reduction Act program – the largest single environmental justice investment in history – delivered by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda

WASHINGTON – Today, July 25, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced more than $325 million in funding for 21 selected applications to help disadvantaged communities tackle environmental and climate justice challenges through projects that reduce pollution, increase community climate resilience and build community capacity. Made possible by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the Community Change Grants Program is the single largest investment in environmental and climate justice in history. The funding announcement today is the first tranche of nearly $2 billion from the program that was designed based on community input to award grants on a rolling basis.

These selected applications are the first to come under the Community Change Grants Program’s rolling application process. Informed by robust stakeholder engagement and community feedback, the innovative rolling application process will ensure that applicants have ample time to prepare and take advantage of this historic resource. The Community Change Grants Program Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), administered through the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, is still accepting applications through November 21, 2024. EPA will continue to review applications and announce selections on a rolling basis.

“Our ability to deliver tangible results for communities depends on listening to them and developing innovative solutions through inclusive stakeholder engagement,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “Today, thanks to President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, EPA has selected the first cohort of community partnerships to solve emerging and longstanding environmental and climate justice challenges.”

“Today’s grants put communities in the driver’s seat on the road to righting the environmental wrongs of the past and building their own clean energy future,” said John Podesta, Senior Advisor to the President for International Climate Policy.

“President Biden’s Investing in America agenda has accelerated our efforts to deliver environmental justice for communities that have been left behind for too long,” said Brenda Mallory, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “As part of the President’s Justice40 Initiative, these grants will help disadvantaged communities tackle environmental and climate justice challenges they face by reducing pollution, increasing resilience to impacts from climate change, and building community capacity to see these projects through.”

The Inflation Reduction Act provides $3 billion to EPA to award grants that help disadvantaged communities and provide technical assistance. With these grants, EPA is delivering on this mission.

The Community Change Grants also deliver on President Biden’s commitment to advance equity and justice throughout the United States through his Justice40 Initiative to ensure that 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain federal investments go to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.

Example grants from this initial selection cohort include:

• Nearly $20 million to the Midwest Tribal Energy Resources Association (MTERA) and Grid Alternatives to install home weatherization and energy efficiency upgrades across 35 Tribes in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, improving indoor air quality for families and providing leadership development training for designated Tribal Energy Champions. MTERA also received a $62 million award from the EPA Solar for All program in May.
• $20 million to the Coalition for Responsible Community Development and Los Angeles Trade-Technical College to build environmental justice workforce development trainings for lead abatement, welding, hybrid and electric vehicle maintenance, home weatherization, and residential energy audits. Through this grant, the selected applicants are anticipated to complete lead abatement for more than 600 homes across Southern Los Angeles.
• Over $14 million to Texas A&M University and the Black Belt Unincorporated Wastewater Program to install onsite wastewater treatment systems throughout 17 Black Belt counties in Alabama. Administrator Regan previously visited Lowndes County, Alabama—whose failing septic tanks and straight-piped sewage from homes into yards created a public health crisis in the region. This community also received a 100% forgivable $8.7 million loan from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to address critical wastewater challenges impacting families.
• Roughly $14 million to the Pittsburgh Conservation Corps and PowerCorpsPHL to expand workforce programs around urban forestry and wood waste reduction, expanding tree canopy in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and keeping wood waste out of landfills. This grant also includes funds to leverage biochar in reducing lead pollution in Pittsburgh soils.

Track I of the program, Community-Driven Investments for Change, is expected to award approximately $1.96 billion for 150 projects for $10-20 million each. The 17 Track I applicants who are implementing community-scale projects to address environmental and climate justice challenges are:

• Texas A&M University and Black Belt Unincorporated Wastewater Program (Wilcox/Hale/Lowndes Counties, AL)
• City of Bakersfield and Building Healthy Communities Kern (Bakersfield, CA)
• La Familia Counseling Center, Inc. and Community Resource Project (Sacramento, CA)
• Coalition for Responsible Community Development and Los Angeles Trade -Technical College (Los Angeles, CA)
• The San Diego Foundation and The Environmental Health Coalition (San Diego, CA)
• Day One and Active SGV (San Gabriel Valley, CA)
• City of Pocatello and Portneuf Greenway Foundation (Pocatello, ID)
• Dillard University and United Way of Southeast Louisiana (Southeast LA)
• City of Springfield and Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts (Springfield, MA)
• Midwest Tribal Energy Resources Association and Grid Alternatives (MI, MN, WI)
• The MetroHealth System and Community Housing Solutions (Cleveland, OH)
• Lane County Oregon and United Way of Lane County (Lane County, OR)
• Pittsburgh Conservation Corps and PowerCorpsPHL (Pittsburgh/Philadelphia, PA)
• The Trust for Public Land and City of Chattanooga (Chattanooga, TN)
• City of Houston and Black United Fund of Texas (Houston, TX)
• Corporation of Gonzaga University and Spokane Neighborhood Action Partners (Spokane, WA)
• National Housing Trust and D.C. Children’s Law Center (Washington, D.C.)

Track II, Meaningful Engagement for Equitable Governance, is expected to award approximately $40 million for 20 projects for $1-3 million each. Track II applicants who will facilitate individual and community participation in governmental decision-making processes are:

• Insight Garden Program and Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (multiple locations in CA)
• The Trust for Public Land and See You At The Top (Cleveland, OH)
• Special Service for Groups, Inc. and Center for Asian Americans United for Self Empowerment (Los Angeles, CA)
• Bronx River Alliance, Inc. and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (Bronx County, NY)

Of the 21 selections, three are for Target Investment Areas identified in the NOFO. Target Investment Area funding is intended to ensure that Community Change Grants Program funding is directed towards disadvantaged communities with unique circumstances, geography, and needs.

See the full listing of the initial 21 organizations receiving a CCGP grant and learn more about CCGP.

As the Community Change Grants Program is still accepting applications through November 21, 2024, EPA encourages applicants to submit applications as soon as they completely meet the NOFO requirements. EPA will be making additional selections on a rolling basis for the remainder of 2024. EPA also encourages interested applicants to apply for technical assistance as soon as possible, as the last day to request new technical assistance is August 16, 2024.

Read the Community Change Grants NOFO on EPA’s Inflation Reduction Act Community Change Grants Program webpage.

To learn more about the Community Change Grants and Technical Assistance visit EPA’s Inflation Reduction Act Community Change Grants Program webpage.

To learn more about environmental justice at EPA, visit EPA’s Environmental Justice webpage.

Water News for June 2024

A report has found that thousands of oil and gas wells across Colorado cannot generate enough revenue to cover their own cleanup cost. More than half the state’s oil and gas wells will generate, at most, $1bn in revenue and it will cost $4bn to $5bn to decommission those sites responsibly. Without quick action by state officials, Colorado taxpayers may be on the hook to foot the remaining $3bn.

Massive water main breaks in Atlanta this month forced a boil water advisory and citywide shutdown.

Large parts of South Carolina could be submerged by water as sea levels rise because of climate change. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that by the year 2100, global sea levels could rise by up to 3.6 feet if greenhouse gas emissions are not mitigated. It added that a rise of about 6.6 feet “cannot be ruled out.”

Norfolk Southern Corp. recently announced it will pay more than $300 million to resolve investigations by three US agencies in the aftermath of a catastrophic train derailment last year that contaminated the town of East Palestine, Ohio with toxic chemicals. $40 million of the total will go to long-term monitoring of water contamination.

The world’s oceans – already being pushed into an extreme new state because of the climate crisis – are now facing a “triple threat” of extreme heating, oxygen loss and acidification, according to research. These three threats have been spurred by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, the study found, with about a fifth of the world’s ocean surface being particularly vulnerable to the three threats hitting at once. (Research by AGU Advances, reported in The Guardian.)

Nearly 19% of water systems tested in PA contain PFAS levels above new EPA standards.

It is often said that it takes about 12 times as much water to grow an avocado as it does a tomato. That’s why avocado growing is a highly controversial enterprise, and “avocado militias” are forming in areas of Mexico where water is scarce. The Guardian.

The Politics of PFAS

Wisconsin Republicans are withholding $125m designated for cleanup of widespread PFAS contamination in drinking water and have said they will only release the funds in exchange for immunity for polluters. Full story.

More on Rising Sea Levels

The world’s oceans are rising, and every year seawater reaches farther inland, which poses an ever-increasing threat to homes, businesses and critical infrastructure. By 2030, the number of critical buildings and facilities at risk of routine and repeat flooding along US coastlines is expected to grow by 20% compared to 2020 conditions. Hundreds of US homes, schools and government buildings will face repeated flooding by 2050 due to rising sea levels, a study has found, disrupting the lives of millions of Americans. Nearly 3 million people live in the 703 US coastal communities at risk of critical infrastructure flooding as early as 2050.