Selawik, Alaska, is a Iñupiat Eskimo community where generations have survived off the land.
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Commission Chair Brian Sirmans said the changes came at the request of the University System of Georgia and are intended to clarify language that had picked up unintended negative meanings over the years.
The Current is an inclusive nonprofit, non-partisan news organization providing in-depth watchdog journalism for Savannah and Coastal Georgia’s communities.
Twenty years ago, the George W. Bush government formally chose the dry, arid landscape to build a tunnel complex. The Yucca Mountain project would have been the place to deposit up to 70,000, or more than 75% of the 90,000-and-growing metric tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel coming from commercial reactors in the country. Yet, almost from the onset, locals and politicians resisted the project because of what it would entail: a constant stream of nuclear waste coming into Nevada from where they are currently stored, hundreds of miles away. (Only one of the 75 sites with currently operating nuclear plants are even located within the Mountain States, an eight-state region including Nevada that spans nearly 900 thousand square miles across the Rockies.) And so, between 2009 and 2010, the Obama administration kept its campaign promise and stopped the project.
“I just didn’t like it. It was too much danger in nuclear radiation leaks. And, it just didn’t
make sense. Then, the safety aspects […] I don’t know quite how to put it, it just didn’t make sense to transport that kind of stuff through this area when the areas that were keeping it couldn’t just keep it in their own backyard.”
“I don’t know quite how to put it, it just didn’t make sense to transport that kind of stuff through this area when the areas that were keeping it couldn’t just keep it in their own backyard.”
Barbara and Ken Dugan lived near Crescent Valley, Nevada, back in 2011. The events of the Fukushima meltdown were fresh on everyone’s minds. They were speaking to Abby Johnson, then the Nuclear Waste Advisor for Eureka County who worked on collecting opinions from local communities after the Yucca Mountain project shut down.
Another decade on, the U.S. still has no solid solution for its nuclear waste. Nuclear power leaves a small carbon footprint compared to other types of energy. Still, the question of managing its waste is complicated. Nuclear waste can stay radioactive from a few hours to hundreds of thousands of years. Therefore, scientists and the industry agree that the best long-term solution is to bury the waste underground in large, heavily engineered repositories while it remains unsafe. But building these sites seems to be a difficult endeavour, and the U.S. isn’t the only country struggling to get it done.
Out of the 32 nations operating nuclear reactors today, only Finland is close to finishing a deposit. Countries like the U.K., where the first nuclear power station in the world to produce electricity for domestic use was built, are struggling with finding a site in the first place. According to a 2018 report, “Reset of America’s Nuclear Waste and Management”, prepared by the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs, for 50 years, governments and committees worldwide have launched at least 24 campaigns to create underground repositories. Still, in only five of these, committees managed to choose a site to work with. And so, the question arises: how come nations capable of technological breakthroughs like sending humans to space can’t seem to find a place for their radioactive waste?
A lack of policymaking consistency hasn’t helped the nuclear waste cause on American soil; that’s what Rodney Ewing — co-director of CISAC and the former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board who reviewed the Department of Energy’s efforts to manage and dispose of nuclear waste during the Obama administration— thinks is part of the answer.
According to him, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, which represented the path forward in managing nuclear waste in the U.S., kept changing throughout the 80s and 90s. For example, congressional amendments in 1987 specified Yucca Mountain as the sole candidate site instead of allowing for multiple candidate sites to be considered. More recently, the ongoing chaos of re-funding and re-defunding Yucca Mountain by the Trump administration made it challenging to convince anyone. “The more you keep changing direction, or changing the rules, the less trust you can count on from candidate communities. The lower the probability that you will be successful”, he adds.
“The more you keep changing direction, or changing the rules, the less trust you can count on from candidate communities. The lower the probability that you will be successful”
Ewing believes the country needs cohesiveness and an independent organization to move forward — perhaps in a manner similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority, as recommended by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future in 2012, or a non-profit, nuclear utility-owned implementing corporation, as suggested in the 2018 CISAC report.“In the past, Yucca Mountain suffered from the fact that the Department of Energy wears many hats, everything from fossil fuels, solar, nuclear, nuclear weapons, and so on. Somehow, in that broad context, developing a geologic repository was low on the [priority] list.”
Another hurdle that has made this project an uphill battle in the U.S. is the bungling of public engagement. Unlike the NIMBY battles unfolding across the country that are snarling public transit, solar farms, or less-carbon-intensive forms of housing, Yucca Mountain falls on Western Shoshone territory, where Indigenous residents are still dealing with the consequences of resource extraction and nuclear testing by the federal government without their full consent, leading to their sustained opposition to the project. This is not to mention other local fears about the toxicity levels of a deposit, the permanence of the project (radiation levels were expected to be regulated for the next million years), and the impact it might have on property and land values. “The state of Nevada has not been willing to accept this possibility [of a nuclear waste deposit]. And so, the federal government has dealt with a state that doesn’t want the repository. That’s a social issue”, says Ewing.
To minimize public outcry, it’s key that a site is decided voluntarily: a community states they’d accept a nuclear waste site in their area, and only after initial conversations should projects start. This is one of the reasons Finland ended up being successful with their project when the local authority voted overwhelmingly in favour. Yet, according to Pasi Tuohimaa, the Communications Manager at Posiva — the company responsible for managing radioactive waste in Finland —there’s more to the whole process. Culture takes center stage when choosing a site. He told The Xylom that communities where nuclear power plants had been active for decades tend to be more accepting of hosting a nuclear waste site. “If you have a strong nuclear identity, if you have a site where there’s been a power plant for 40 years or 45 years, then people know […] a lot about radiation, they know about radiation safety”. He also mentions that Finns, in general, want to solve the issue of nuclear waste rapidly not to harm future generations. “The Finnish people believe that if our generation has created [nuclear waste], then it’s our generation’s duty to take care of the waste and not leave it for the solidarity of future generations”, he adds.
“The Finnish people believe that if our generation has created [nuclear waste], then it’s our generation’s duty to take care of the waste and not leave it for the solidarity of future generations”
Other nations like Canada and the U.K. are now moving forward with strategies in which communities host deep geological repositories voluntarily. The Biden administration is also moving forward with a consent-based siting approach; however, the aim is to make storage sites, not geological repositories15,18. This means waste will be stored for some time but not in the long term: a permit issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in May to build and operate one such facility in southeastern New Mexico is valid for only 40 years. Ewing is skeptical of such an approach.“I call it indefinite storage. And I would say indefinite surface storage of highly radioactive waste […] is not a very attractive solution. It’s not a solution.”
Building deep geological repositories is crucial to safely deposit nuclear waste despite being a tall task. As other western Nations inch closer to having their own sites, it remains to be seen whether the U.S. has the will to drive a much-needed site forward, or whether it is content with kicking the can down the road — until the country buckles under this mountain of a problem.
This coverage is made possible through a partnership with Grist and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station.
Tybee Island in Georgia has a rain problem.
The small barrier island’s stormwater system, fed by storm drains across the coastal community, funnels into a pipe that comes out on the beach at the southern tip of Tybee. But that pipe gets regularly buried by sand.
“What happens is when it gets covered with sand, and the tide rises, there’s nowhere for the stormwater to go,” said Alan Robertson, a Tybee resident and consultant for the city.
The water backs up in the system and wells up out of the drains, flooding the roads. It’s a chronic problem, he said, that the city is trying to solve.
“The city has to clear this every day,” Roberston said.
Tybee’s not alone. All over the country, old stormwater systems struggle to keep up with increased rainfall due to climate change. Rising sea levels and groundwater — also from climate change — squeeze the systems from the other end. Infrastructure like roads, hospitals and wastewater plants need to be shored up against flooding. Residents need protection from heat, wildfire, floodwater, and other climate impacts.
All of that is expensive. The good news for local governments tackling these problems is that lots of state and federal money is out there to fund resilience projects. The recent federal infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act are adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the pot.
But there’s also bad news: The money is often hard to actually get, and that difficulty can amplify inequities for communities that need help the most.
“All these great numbers and these great programs means absolutely nothing if communities that need it most can’t have access to it,” said Daniel Blackman, a regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The funding often comes through competitive grants, with applications that are complicated and highly technical. They take time and expertise that under-resourced local governments often lack.
“One of the major capacity constraints of a lot of these local governments are that they have few grant writers on staff,” said Michael Dexter, director of federal programs for the Southeast Sustainability Directors Network.
Local government staff with plenty of work on their plates can often struggle to keep track of the different funding opportunities, coordinate the necessary partners, or come up with the local match funding some grants require.
“A lot of communities shy away from going after grant funds just because of that,” said Jennifer Kline, the coastal hazard specialist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Coastal Management Program.
Without a dedicated, expert grant writer and plenty of staff, communities may miss out on these huge amounts of money. That’s especially true in communities of color where old, racist policies discouraged investment and growth, according to Nathaniel Smith, founder of the Partnership for Southern Equity.
“If you look at many of the communities that face the greatest challenges, a lot of times people just assume that it happened by happenstance,” Smith said. “And that couldn’t be furthest from the truth.”
He pointed to redlining, a set of policies under which banks refused loans in areas deemed to be high-risk, which were primarily Black neighborhoods, as well as the construction of highways that obliterated thriving Black communities. There were also federal policies that encouraged suburbanization and white flight from cities. When schools are funded with property taxes so that wealthier and whiter areas have better equipped schools, that also amplifies the inequities, he said.
“All of these things have helped to facilitate a competitive advantage of, in particular, white communities and well-resourced communities,” Smith said.
For many of the same reasons, those same historically disinvested places — often communities of color — stand to be hit hardest by climate change: they often have less shade to reduce heat, are less protected from flooding, and face more of the health problems that climate change makes worse.
The Biden administration is trying to address this disparity with its Justice40 initiative, which promises to put 40 percent of federal climate funding toward historically disadvantaged communities. The process for identifying those communities has been criticized for some of the metrics it uses, for failing to account for cumulative burdens, and for not explicitly incorporating race. Because it’s broken down by census tract, Dexter said, the program can miss “localized need.” In places where a poor neighborhood is near a wealthier one, for instance, the average income across the tract could be too high to qualify.
“There’s still obviously uncertainty about how that’s gonna be implemented in some of these various different grant competitions,” he said.
And communities that qualify still have to successfully apply for and win those grants.
Through a program called the Justice40 Accelerator, Smith’s group and several partners offer funding and technical support to help eligible places get that money. The program has so far trained two cohorts, a total of 100 environmental and community groups from across the country. Along with grant writing help and mentorship, the accelerator provides $25,000 to each participating organization to help them develop their proposals.
“It takes real resources and time and support to ensure that local communities are positioned to compete,” Smith said.
So far, the program boasts an 81 percent success rate for its cohorts’ grant applications, totaling more than $28 million in funding awarded.
Many of the state and federal agencies that dole out grants offer help as well. The EPA, for instance, recently announced $177 million in funding for 17 of what it’s calling Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers. Their goal is to help “underserved and overburdened” communities access federal funds. The centers, mostly based at universities or environmental groups, will provide training on grant writing and management as well as practical assistance like translation services for community outreach and meetings.
“It’s not going to solve every problem,” said Blackman. “But what it’s going to do is it’s going to address the concern you have in those individuals being able to write and access federal funding and grants.”
Kline’s DNR Coastal Management Program also provides assistance in finding and applying for grants. Dexter said his group, the Southeast Sustainability Directors Network, does too.
What’s not clear is whether all of that is enough.
“I was gonna say that’s the $100 million question,” Dexter joked. “No, that’s the $1 trillion, multiple-trillion-dollar question.”
And it’s just one of the looming questions in these early stages of the IRA and infrastructure law rollouts. No one knows yet if there’s enough help for places that need it, or if those communities know the help is out there. It’s also unclear whether the assistance programs will help local governments not just apply for and win grants, but administer them and deliver the projects on time – itself a time-consuming and difficult process.
There’s some reason for hope, Dexter said, even as communities scramble for funding and groups like his scramble to provide enough support: The new federal laws are designed to offer funding over several years, instead of immediately. This is an important lesson learned, he said, from 2009’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and its heavy emphasis on “shovel-ready” projects. This time, some of the funding can be used for planning, and there is a bit more time for cities to get their ducks in a row.
“Hypothetically, that leads to this great scenario where a community might come in, in year one, access planning funding, and then by year three or four be able to access the implementation funding for that project,” Dexter said.
That’s exactly the system Tybee Island is working with now. Robertson maintains a spreadsheet of projects that need funding. He has plans for how some of the work can unfold over multiple grant cycles.
“We’re in a pretty good space now,” he said. “We can be much more responsive to many more opportunities because we have identified these projects.”
While stormwater remains a problem, the city has gotten grants to build protective dunes and elevate flood-prone houses.
But Tybee Island got lucky: Robertson, a resident with grant writing experience, stepped up after Hurricane Matthew devastated the island in 2016. The city contracted with him, and he deliberately worked to build up this grant capacity.
As the wave of new federal funding comes, other communities are looking for similar help.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline There’s big climate money out there for small towns. But will they get it? on May 25, 2023.
For the first time in U.S. history, the Justice Department has concluded an environmental justice inquiry through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, determining that the state of Alabama and Lowndes County discriminated against Black residents for decades. The findings from the investigation have led to an agreement involving the Alabama Department of Public Health […]
The post Alabama Discriminated Against Black Residents, Feds Confirm appeared first on Capital B.
A monumental federal plan would require most fossil fuel power plants to slash their greenhouse gas pollution by 90% by 2040 — or shut down. The Biden administration plan, announced on Thursday, could limit the amount of climate change-causing emissions released. If implemented, for the first time in U.S. history, the amount of greenhouse gasses […]
The post Black Communities Overburdened by Power Plant Pollution May See Relief appeared first on Capital B.
When Brendalyn King and her partner, Osei Doyle, quit their jobs and left Brooklyn, New York, in 2020 to buy land, they had high hopes of entering the growing industrial hemp industry. They moved to Salem, Illinois, to farm on a family friend’s land until they were able to buy the property. However, they never […]
The post Black Farmers Looked to Cash In on the CBD Industry. Now, Hemp Is in Decline. appeared first on Capital B.
