Grant Supports Ecological Restoration and Climate Resilience in the Berkshires

Housatonic Valley Association (HVA) Press Release

'Lifesaving' $20 Million in Funding Announced for the Removal of the Crumbling Bel Air Dam in Pittsfield

Amanda Burke | The Berkshire Eagle

"State officials heralded a $20 million cash infusion Friday that will fund the removal of an aging dam whose failure would threaten the safety of a downtown neighborhood. The story of how the Bel Air Dam off Wahconah Street was built and ultimately fell into disrepair is a long one, but officials say it will be over in a few years. The state announced in September that it would be removing the 19th century dam, and pegged the cost of doing so at $19 million. The fast-tracked project took another step forward on Friday [December 1, 2023], when state leaders gathered at City Hall to announce that the state's allotment of federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars would be used as funding, to the tune of $20 million — up $1 million from that initial figure. 'This is another example of a really important environmental restoration project in the heart of our city,' Jim McGrath, the city's park, open space and natural resource program manager, told The Eagle Friday. Driving the cost of the project is the removal of environmental contaminants, he said. Workers will haul 355 tons of sediment polluted with chromium, arsenic and lead out of the area. Work is slated to begin in summer 2025 or spring 2026, and McGrath said it could be completed in the span of one six-month construction period. [...] Officials said the removal of the abandoned dam will improve habitat conditions for wildlife by removing the contaminants and restoring that portion of the Housatonic River to its natural flow state." READ MORE

A 'Concrete' Solution to Climate Change

Peter O'Dowd | WBUR

"Many of the new solutions to fight climate change sound almost impossible. What if a machine could suck planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the air and store the gas forever inside concrete bridges and buildings? Well, that’s happening. Last month, in the city of Tracy, California, the U.S. energy secretary joined a group of very excited scientists and corporate executives to celebrate a milestone: the country’s first commercial-scale direct-air capture, or DAC, facility. [...] Heirloom is just three years old, but the company has already secured a huge investment from the federal government and a sizable boost from some of the biggest names in technology. The direct-air capture plant in Tracy promises to absorb 1,000 tons of CO2 from the sky every year — it’s equivalent to taking about 220 cars off the road. The technology works by taking advantage of limestone’s natural tendency to absorb carbon dioxide. Inside Heirloom’s DAC plant, towers of stacked trays rise 40 feet above the ground. Each one of the trays is covered with a powdery limestone substance. As a breeze moves through the open-air building, the carbon in the atmosphere binds to the limestone. After a few days, robots move the trays into a kiln where a blast of heat separates the carbon from the limestone. All of it is powered by renewable energy. But one plant is nowhere near enough, Samala says." READ MORE

A Quarter of Freshwater Fish Are at Risk of Extinction, a New Assessment Finds

Catrin Einhorn | The New York Times

"A quarter of the world’s freshwater fish are at risk of extinction, according to the first comprehensive assessment of the animals by the world’s leading scientific authority on the status of species. The findings, issued on Monday by the International Union for Conservation of Nature at the U.N. climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, are part of the organization’s latest update to its Red List of Threatened Species. They came as an array of scientists, advocates and ministers attending the negotiations were urging nations to tackle the global biodiversity crisis in tandem with global warming. [...] The assessment found that the biggest threat to freshwater fish was pollution, affecting 57 percent of the imperiled species in the group. The pollution comes from fertilizers and pesticides running off farm fields, from sediment clogging up rivers and streams after land has been cleared and from human sewage and industrial waste. Dams and water extraction came in second, menacing 45 percent of threatened freshwater fish. Overfishing, invasive species and disease also take a toll. [...] The update included evaluations of 1,640 species of freshwater fish that had never been assessed before, bringing the total to 14,898. That met the threshold of 80 percent of known species in the group, the point at which the I.U.C.N. considers a group of species to be comprehensively assessed.

Atlantic salmon, which begin and end their lives in the rivers and streams of North America and Europe, moved from being considered a species of least concern to being classified as near threatened. New evidence suggests that their global population decreased 23 percent between 2006 and 2020, with climate change affecting them at all life stages. Dams cut them off from spawning and feeding grounds. Pollution from agriculture and logging kills their young. [...] The assessment of freshwater fish adds to a grim trend for biodiversity worldwide. While public attention has long focused on charismatic mammals and birds, there’s increasing scientific awareness of alarming declines in all kinds of groups. Amphibians appear to be the most imperiled of vertebrates, with 40 percent threatened with extinction, and with their status deteriorating globally. For reptiles, it’s 20 percent. Invertebrates are even harder to assess and protect. Then, there are the plants. While a global tree assessment is ongoing, current data shows that a third of all tree species are imperiled." READ MORE

State Charts a New Energy Future for Mass. Beyond Natural Gas

Sabrina Shankman | The Boston Globe

"The state of Massachusetts appears to be breaking up with natural gas. State officials on Wednesday laid out a new regulatory strategy to move utilities away from natural gas as part of a broader effort to effectively zero out emissions from fossil fuels by 2050. Though in general terms instead of specific instructions, the order from the Department of Public Utilities offers this vision for the state in the mid 21st century: minimal gas pipelines; buildings powered by solar and wind, and warmed by heat pumps; and people cooking on electric stoves. The edict marks an abrupt about-face from the DPU’s more industry-friendly approach under the previous governor, Charlie Baker, and the new message is clear: the transition away from pipeline-delivered gas is happening — whether the utilities like it or not. 'It is fair to say that a different lens will be applied to gas infrastructure investments going forward,' DPU commissioners wrote in the order.The transition won’t happen overnight, and no building owners will find themselves suddenly forced to change the way they heat their homes. But ultimately the DPU wants to curb any increases in natural gas consumption and make sure decisions by gas utilities are made with the state’s climate targets in mind. [...] The new report also calls for shifts in economics. Right now, gas companies profit by bringing in new customers, which puts the business imperative of the utilities at odds with the state’s climate target. The DPU wants to change that. The stakes for the utilities are enormous. More than half the homes in the state use natural gas for heating, and there are some 1.8 million gas customers all together, according to federal data. National Grid, for example, reported that in 2022, it had almost $1.9 billion in sales to all natural gas customers in Massachusetts, and $1.4 billion in operations and maintenance expenses. [...] And, beginning in 2025, gas utilities will also now have to file Climate Compliance Plans every five years, starting in 2025, that include performance metrics that ensure they are helping hit climate targets." READ MORE

What about COP28?

John Prusinski | NFGiM Monthly Environmental News

"In case you're just catching up, COP is an international climate meeting held each year by the United Nations. The name stands for 'Conference of the Parties,' meaning those countries who have joined the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Parties to the treaty have committed to take voluntary actions to prevent 'dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.' Perhaps the most important word in that description is 'voluntary'. At the 1997 Kyoto conference, for the first time, a target was set for reducing greenhouse gas emissions: the aim was to bring them down by about 5%, compared with 1990 levels, by 2012. Yet global greenhouse gas emissions have been increasing every year since then. COP28, the 28th annual United Nations climate meeting taking place this week, is being held in Dubai in the UAE, one of the world's top 10 oil-producing nations. Sultan al-Jaber, appointed president of COP28, is the chief executive of the state-owned oil company, which reportedly plans to expand production capacity. The BBC has obtained documents that suggest the UAE planned to use its role as host to strike oil and gas deals with countries attending the conference. Meanwhile, President Biden will not attend the climate talks. The president responsible for the greatest investment in US history in a clean energy transition has also presided as U.S. oil and natural gas production have set new records. And the official US stance is 'ending emissions', not 'ending fossil fuels'; which means counting on carbon capture technology, which despite numerous attempts, to date has never been shown to work at scale. In spite of COP’s legacy of broken promises, that’s not to say that no good comes out of it; although the good news is somehow always mixed. For example, a longtime sticking point has been the proposal that the wealthier (and heaviest emitting) countries should contribute to a fund to pay for damage from climate-driven storms and drought ravaged poorer countries. In a surprise that brought an ovation to the floor of COP28’s first day, the fund was actually launched and received contributions from the EU, UK, US and others totaling around $400 million. That sounds promising, but the details reveal that the US contribution is a paltry $17 million, a far cry from the Biden administration’s pledge to provide $11.4 billion per year by 2024. And this should be put in the context of where real money goes: military aid from the US to other countries dwarfs that number, and Qatar has reportedly spent $220 billion alone to host the 2022 World Cup. Getting nearly every nation on the planet to agree to work together to stop global warming is a slow and difficult process. A pact to actually phase out fossil fuels might be within reach, but it’s likely to take years, if not decades, to reach that on a global scale. So where does that leave us?" READ MORE

Note: The COP28 was held from November 30 to December 12, 2023. This NFGiM newsletter was published on December 1.

From Gas in Pennsylvania to Toxic Waste in Texas, Tracking Vinyl Chloride Production in the U.S.

Kiley Bense | Inside Climate News

"On the evening of May 17, 1970, the 19th car of a freight train derailed in the Pennsylvania village of Cromby, a small town nestled along a horseshoe curve in the Schuylkill River about 30 miles from Philadelphia. The car was carrying thousands of gallons of vinyl chloride, a highly flammable gas that is used to make polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, a plastic used to make pipes and flooring and known for its durability. En route to a nearby Pennsylvania plastics company, the train’s four cars containing the volatile chemical had originated at a plant in Freeport, Texas, 1,600 miles away. Twenty families in Cromby were evacuated from their homes, and two police officers and a volunteer who was helping to evacuate people were taken to the hospital after being exposed to the toxic fumes. To avoid a catastrophic explosion, firefighters sprayed water on the leaking car for 24 hours, emptying its contents into the Schuylkill even as some of the gas escaped into the air. The town’s municipal water treatment plant had to be shut down. [...] Fifty years later, vinyl chloride has become infamous for its involvement in another train derailment, in East Palestine, Ohio, just over the Pennsylvania border. In February, officials released more than a million pounds of vinyl chloride into the environment in a controlled vent and burn, after five cars carrying  15,580 gallons of the hazardous chemical derailed. Two thousand residents were evacuated, and some have since experienced health issues they blame on the vinyl chloride burn. East Palestine and Cromby are not unique: they’re just two examples in a long parade of vinyl chloride rail accidents that have struck communities across the United States without warning for decades, in Arkansas, Michigan, Louisiana, Illinois, Texas, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Paulsboro, New Jersey, on a track that the East Palestine train would have followed had it continued across Pennsylvania from Ohio, and which involved one of the same companies, OxyVinyls. The story of the vinyl chloride on the East Palestine train–where it came from, how it was made, where it was going, and what kinds of products it would have eventually become–is a window into America’s vast plastics-making infrastructure, a system that stretches from gas fields in Appalachia to railyards in the Midwest to Gulf Coast petrochemical hubs to factories in the densely populated Northeast, encompassing thousands of miles of rail lines and pipelines as well as gas wells, storage facilities and plants. Because the ethane needed to make vinyl chloride is a byproduct of natural gas, it’s also an illustration of the side effects of the 21st-century fracking boom. [...] The production of vinyl chloride and PVC starts with natural gas. Natural gas is processed and then fractionated into individual components like butane, propane and ethane, which is what is used to make vinyl chloride. [...] The U.S. production capacity of ethylene has increased by 50 percent since 2015, and the industry has opened 12 new ethylene cracker plants between 2017 and 2022, with more proposed or under construction. These plants consume massive amounts of natural gas: Shell’s Monaca, Pennsylvania ethylene cracker, 20 miles from East Palestine and opened in 2022, is fed by more than 1,000 active fracking wells and 98 miles of pipeline. Cracker plants require power plants to run, and Beyond Plastics concluded in 2021 that together these plants emit 70 million tons of carbon dioxide per year." READ MORE