Until recently, however, the cause of the fire remained a mystery. In early June, the Boulder County Sheriff’s office released the results of its investigation into the fire’s origin, identifying two sparks: a seemingly dormant ember blown from an outdoor firepit in Marshall, and a downed Xcel Energy power line a few hundred feet south. The findings resolved one major question about the Marshall Fire, though other challenges, from building codes to home insurance disputes, still smolder for the residents.

High Country News spoke with Ashley Stolzmann, the former mayor of Louisville and a current Boulder County commissioner, to understand the significance of the investigation, how to prepare for the next wildfire, and the details behind a lawsuit seeking damages from Xcel Energy for its role in starting the inferno.  

Stolzmann has amassed an unusual amount of experience when it comes to responding to climate disasters. Her first month as a Louisville city council member coincided with the 2013 Front Range flood, the largest rain event on record in Colorado, which destroyed 262 homes in Boulder County. That earned her an appointment to the Mile High Flood District by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, D, in 2020. A year later, the Marshall Fire forced then-Mayor Stolzmann and her husband to evacuate alongside 40,000 other area residents as she juggled the city’s disaster response. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

High Country News: You were mayor of Louisville during the blaze in 2021 and still live there today. As the fire bore down on the city, residents were sending you texts for information you didn’t have. At the same time, you had to lead the city’s emergency response while making your own decisions about what to save from your home as you evacuated. Could you walk me through what happened that day?

Ashley Stolzmann: I live in Louisville, very close to where the fire was extinguished. In my family, we sort of divided up the tasks that day. I have a great partner and he took care of evacuating our house and worrying about our personal life. That allowed me to go over to emergency operations and just focus on the city stuff. So, my partner really helped me to split my personal life apart from what I was working on for the community. And It was really hard, because neighbors would text me or call me and ask, “Is our neighborhood still here? Is our house OK?” And I didn’t know. It was important that I followed all the evacuation orders that we set because I couldn’t break the rules myself. I actually found out from a neighbor that did break the evacuation rules that our house was still standing. 

HCN: What has the Marshall Fire come to mean for Louisville and Boulder County? 

AS: For the most part, it really has brought people together and shown them the goodness in others: how people really want to help, and continue to want to help. Early in the recovery, some of the community had gas and power and shared their homes with those that didn’t. People were offering showers and heated beds and food. The food sharing has gone on for the whole year and a half, where folks cook dinners for one another and feed each other. Just a lot of caring for one another and resilience. But the fire has also set others back and forced some hard choices. I’ve heard from residents who had to use their children’s college savings account to rebuild their house. There are people that had to decide they’re not rebuilding, just because of their financial situation and their retirement plans. And there are some who didn’t want to rebuild just from the pain of the whole thing. Overall, people have really shown how supportive and resilient they are, what a strong community this is.

HCN: Based on what we know from climate science, this likely won’t be the last Front Range fire catapulted by extreme winds and drought conditions. What have the county and state done to prepare for the next one? 

AS: We’re really ramping up the amount of mitigation we’re doing in the forest and in the grasslands. The community was generous and passed the new tax for fire mitigation that has allowed us to unlock more federal grants because, for any FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) grants, you must have local money to match it. We have done more controlled burns this year, we’ve mitigated more acres of forest land, and we’re grazing areas heavily with livestock to cut down on fuel. But we’re trying to do that with more regenerative practices that keep the water and moisture in the soil. Then came this rainy spring, and we know that means even more fire fuel to manage later down the line. We’ve also made changes to our evacuation system and made changes to the way we dispatch firefighters so that we can try to put out fires faster. 

The biggest piece of it that I’m excited about is we’re working on a public communications plan. It’s a Smokey the Bear-style campaign with the theme of, ‘How can you prepare for forest fires and grassland fires?’ Because there’s another fire coming. It teaches residents about the importance of fire screens on roof vents to keep embers from getting sucked in and of having a fire-resistant perimeter surrounding the home. The campaign also talks about having photos of your house taken, so your insurance company has documentation of what you had in your house; it also underscores the importance of having insurance that’s up to date and a plan for evacuation. 

“I’ve heard from residents who had to use their children’s college savings account to rebuild their house” 

HCN: Insurance companies have fought to prevent payouts to those who lost their homes, adding to the trauma of the fire. What steps are being taken to make sure future wildfire victims are fairly compensated after a loss?

AS: We got two bills passed at the state level this year that I’m proud of. One is about the insurance payout and what people get in a declared disaster and complete loss to make it so that people don’t have to go through the retraumatization of itemizing everything they lost. Judy Amabile, our state representative, brought a bill to correct that part of the insurance process. It allows the Division of Insurance to look at the payout levels on an ongoing basis. The way insurance works is they have software that assesses what the company thinks it will cost to rebuild. 

And then the other bill we passed is called the FAIR Act. The state can now step in with public insurance if a consumer is told by the companies, “No, we will not insure your home.” So, there’s a way for every person in the state to get insurance, because we were starting to see people being denied coverage.

HCN: There’s an ongoing lawsuit against the utility giant Xcel Energy seeking damages since it was one of the company’s downed powerlines that initiated the Marshall Fire. The county investigation confirmed that the dangling wire was one of the fire’s two ignition points but found no grounds for criminal charges against the company. What do you think about the lawsuit and the decision not to pursue charges against Xcel? 

AS: The sheriff’s office did the investigation and then the district attorney looked to see if there could be charges brought. So much detailed effort was put in to really consider if there was a case for a criminal charge, and the district attorney found there was not. But that doesn’t mean that people cannot pursue civil lawsuits for accountability.

HCN: The fire torched over a thousand homes in Boulder County. How far has the recovery come in the year and a half since? 

AS: For our community members, it’s not going nearly fast enough. We want everybody back home. But from a disaster standpoint, when you look at other disasters like ours, we are really doing great as a community getting homes rebuilt. All of the debris is removed, and more than half of the people who lost their homes are well into the process of rebuilding, which is incredible. And then the best news I can deliver is that the rebuilding of a large condo unit that burned down, broke ground last weekend. That was one that was keeping me up at night. 

Samuel Shaw is an editorial intern for High Country News based in the Colorado Front Range. Email him at samuel.shaw@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy. Follow Samuel on Instagram @youngandforgettable. 

This story was published as a partnership between the Center for Public Integrity and Fresnoland.

When Arlin Benavides Jr. set out to hear residents’ environmental concerns in one of the most marginalized parts of a region facing water scarcity, groundwater contamination, extreme heat and other woes, he wasn’t sure if people would open their doors, much less talk.

He was aiming to engage with people in Tulare County in California’s Central Valley, a region known as the food basket of the world and a place with extreme poverty. Many of the residents live in remote, isolated farming hamlets.

In these far-flung communities, Benavides, an AmeriCorps CivicSpark Fellow working for Tulare County’s Resource Management Agency, discovered that residents felt forgotten by their local government officials. When he explained that he was part of the agency’s effort to develop an environmental justice element for the county’s general plan, he was met with suspicion and skepticism.

“You could see anger rise within them. They would tell me stories of just not having good experiences — most commonly it was the story that they had told previous government agencies what they needed, what were the challenges, and they felt like those changes were not done soon enough,” said Benavides, whose fellowship was part of a CivicSpark program that aims to help local public agencies address community issues such as climate change, water resource management and housing.

What had changed between those experiences and Benavides showing up on their doorsteps: California started requiring local governments to integrate environmental justice principles into their planning processes.

The first such law in the nation, Senate Bill 1000 calls for municipal leaders to engage communities in a meaningful way while doing land use work, such as updating general plans, which set priorities for development. Ultimately, the 2016 law aims to address environmental inequities caused by land use policies, such as poor air quality in communities of color hemmed in by industrial facilities. But on the ground, addressing entrenched inequities baked into urban planning policies can be tough.

In a newly released study, two researchers examined those challenges as municipalities across California implemented SB 1000. It’s an analysis they hope can illuminate efforts across the nation as civic leaders seek solutions for communities burdened by pollution — often Black, Latino, Indigenous and low income.

The study’s authors, Michelle E. Zuñiga and Michael Méndez, said the research was inspired by feedback they heard from community and environmental justice organizations who shared their struggles about how SB 1000 was being implemented and what they described as spotty compliance, particularly in communities facing environmental hazards.

For example: city or county planners who don’t understand institutional and socio-economic barriers facing residents, or planning managers who aren’t supportive of or in some cases are hostile to incorporating environmental justice into their work.

Some municipalities argue that existing land use regulations and policies benefit everyone equally, and that explicit environmental justice ordinances or provisions in a general plan are unnecessary, said Méndez, an assistant professor of environmental planning and policy at the University of California, Irvine.

“Time and time again we see how that is not the case, that urban planning has been used as a racist tool kit to enforce existing disparities within and among communities,” he said.

To determine how the law was being implemented in communities with high levels of cumulative environmental health impacts, Zuñiga and Méndez focused their study on cities and counties with census tracts identified by the state’s environmental health screening tool as the most disadvantaged by pollution, such as toxic releases, groundwater threats, traffic fumes and hazardous waste.

Results, they found, have been mixed. There are positive outcomes, such as the creation of environmental justice advisory committees in Tulare and other counties. But many obstacles remain. The researchers found that some communities experience ineffective community engagement, little support from elected officials, limited discussions of environmental racism and a lack of resources to implement and monitor the measures needed to comply with the law.

These challenges mean progress toward environmental justice will be slow and uneven, the authors wrote: “Environmental justice will not be fully realized without strong oversight and political leadership, and racial diversification of urban planning institutions.”

Their research also affirmed the need for the type of guidance that the California Attorney General’s bureau of environmental justice has issued to local governments about the law. The bureau has done this via comment letters that point out shortcomings in local approaches, but it also provides feedback on how to comply with the law. One of those letters to Tulare County, for example, urged officials not to rush through their general plan amendments before fully engaging with disadvantaged communities.

Attorney General Rob Bonta has also intervened in Fresno, saying in 2022 that Fresno County’s draft general plan raised “civil rights and environmental justice concerns” and pressing Fresno city leaders not to approve a rezoning proposal that would add pollution in “some of the most over-burdened and under-invested environmental justice communities in all of California.”

In some cases,  Zuñiga and Méndez discovered a lack of understanding among planners on how to define environmental justice, so they outlined in the paper how environmental justice is measured, observed and defined.

Last fall when they presented their preliminary findings at the American Planning Association conference, some planners shared that they’ve faced pushback from leaders in politically conservative municipalities, while others described challenges with implementation in areas with historic under-investment, said  Zuñiga, an assistant professor of urban and community planning at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Increasingly, she’s seen more planners across the country take on the task of addressing environmental injustices through local government plans, even without laws such as SB 1000.

“This work is very important, not only for California, where there is a policy mandate, but for other planners in other areas of the country that are taking on this charge as well,” she said. “Because of the push of the community organizations prioritizing environmental justice, they also are pushing for environmental justice plans.”

When Benavides first began his fellowship in Tulare County in late 2019, he decided to reach out to Sacramento County, which had already approved an environmental justice element in their general plan. He wanted to know how they involved community organizations in the process. He learned that Sacramento opted to create an environmental justice advisory committee, a process that he knew would also reinforce the requirements of SB 1000.

But first Benavides set out to conduct outreach to understand the issues — from housing and food justice to public utilities and transportation — that residents faced. Benavides, a resident of the more affluent Marin County near San Francisco, was shocked by what he found.

“I didn’t really realize that there were people that didn’t have potable water; that the conditions which [farmworker advocate] Cesar Chavez was trying to improve or ameliorate are still existing in Tulare County,” said Benavides, who was particularly struck by the stark disparities in wealth between farm owners and the working class residents living in unincorporated areas of the county.

The geographical distances between the county seat of Visalia and these small communities were further deepened by a lack of regular visits from county officials. One woman Benavides spoke to was initially angry as she described how, despite repeated efforts to share the problems facing her community, living conditions either don’t improve at all or don’t improve fast enough. “I think that this is also an ongoing cycle where planners go out into a community to really try to understand people, and then, the moment a plan is developed those relationships are not maintained, those stories are not valued,” said Benavides.

He knows that often this happens because planning agencies may lack the bandwidth or resources to maintain these relationships. But that day, as he spoke to this resident, he decided that no explanation could excuse what she had gone through.

So rather than offer an excuse, he apologized. The woman was so overcome with emotion that she started crying. “I felt like as a representative of local government, it was my due diligence to say, ‘I’m sorry for everything that you’ve experienced,’” he said.

But he also explained that there was something he could do to help in that instance, and that was to invite her to participate in the environmental justice advisory committee that was being formed as part of the general plan process to develop an environmental element.

“There is something that I can do for you, and that is to guarantee that you have a seat at the table,” Benavides told her.

Ultimately, Tulare County did create an Environmental Justice Advisory Committee in 2020 to advise its Resource Management Agency. Key to that is providing feedback on the county’s draft environmental justice element and ensuring that it improves the quality of life for disadvantaged communities throughout the county.

When Benavides ended his fellowship in 2020 and passed the baton to the next AmeriCorps CivicSpark fellow, he was glad to know the committee would continue the relationship-building work.

It’s that level of engagement, he said, where residents’ experiences are not only valued but are imprinted in the land-use planning documents, that can transform lives for the better.

Inviting residents to collaborate on land use and development was a first step, he said. Equally as important for real change, he told residents, is that “we continue building a relationship after that is done.”

The post In Tulare County, officials test new approach to environmental justice appeared first on Fresnoland.

The two-year legal battle to stop the Betabel Commercial project concluded June 9 when attorneys for the three petitioners filed to dismiss the non-CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) claims against the project and the county over zoning issues. 

The petitioners were the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, the Center for Biological Diversity and Protect San Benito County. The non-CEQA claims were the only ones remaining after Superior Court Judge Patrick Palacios dismissed the CEQA claims May 24.

“The [non-CEQA] claims didn’t make much sense as the property has a Regional Commercial designation in the General Plan for this very kind of use,” said Betabel attorney Peter Prows, adding, “All claims are gone. There won’t be another suit.”

Prows said the dismissal will take effect immediately, adding that the petitioners can still appeal the dismissal of the CEQA claims.

“The project can proceed in the meantime,” he told BenitoLink on June 14. “I don’t expect those appeals to be successful as California Supreme Court authority squarely holds these claims are time-barred [past CEQA statute of limitations]. We’ll also be filing a motion to recover our attorney fees against the petitioners” 

He said the lawsuits against the county and Board of Supervisors were also dismissed. 

The county did not respond to BenitoLink’s request for comment on whether there will be a lawsuit to recover court and legal costs.

Rider and Victoria McDowell, owners of the Betabel property, have stated all along that their incentive to remain steadfast was that the project would eventually become a funding mechanism for the charity Cancer-A-Gogo to honor their teenage son who died from brain cancer.

Rider McDowell did not respond to BenitoLink’s request for comment.

Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki is the only supervisor to take a position against the project.   Kosmicki has been adamant that the project did not need to be rushed and suggested that a compromise between the developer and opponents would be a better approach. He questioned the concept of using cancer research “as the pitch to sell this project to this county, to soften the blow with regard to land-use concerns to sell this to the public. We’re setting a really dangerous precedent by allowing this to be considered.”

The Center for Biological Diversity and Protect San Benito County, formerly known as Preserve Our Rural Communities or PORC, filed the lawsuit against the county and the project on Dec. 9, 2022. The commercial project is located along Hwy 101 on the northern tip of the county. 

In their lawsuit, both Protect San Benito and the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band argued, “The project’s EIR [environmental impact report] fails to adequately identify, evaluate, and/or require mitigation for all significant direct and cumulative environmental impacts the project will cause.”

Andy Hsia-Coron, one of the founders of PORC and Protect San Benito, did not respond to BenitoLink’s request for comment on whether he intends to appeal the decision or come back with another lawsuit.

In March, the California Department of Justice filed a motion to intervene in the case but Judge Palacios denied it at the May 24 hearing. Deputy Attorney General Yuting Chi attended the May 24 hearing on Zoom but did not comment during the hearing. After the judge’s ruling, the attorney general’s office did not respond to BenitoLink’s request for comment on why it got involved or whether it will take any future action.

Related stories:

Portions of cases against Betabel project dismissed | BenitoLink

Judge tentatively dismisses suits against Betabel project | BenitoLink

Appeals on Betabel project unsuccessful | BenitoLink

San Benito County planners approve Betabel project | BenitoLink

Betabel Road project continues to move forward | BenitoLink

Over 30 people protest the Betabel Road project | BenitoLink

Groundbreaking takes place for Betabel Road project | BenitoLink

Environmentalists protest development moves | BenitoLink

Betabel project keeps commercial designation following lawsuit | BenitoLink

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The post All remaining lawsuits against Betabel project and county dismissed appeared first on BenitoLink.

After 15 years of planning and permitting, construction will begin this year on the TransWest Express high-voltage transmission line — a milestone expansion of Wyoming’s electric power export industry to markets in the American Southwest and one of the largest transmission upgrades to the western grid in decades.

The Bureau of Land Management granted TransWest Express LLC a “notice to proceed” in April, culminating years of work and millions of dollars invested in a “vision” to bring Wyoming’s renewable energy potential to the rest of the West, according to company officials.

“It’s a day that’s been long coming,” TransWest Express Executive Vice President and COO Roxane Perruso said. A groundbreaking event will take place Tuesday, she said, with a special appreciation for the Carbon County community’s integral support. That support represented a leap-of-faith for a region with its cultural and economic roots in coal.

Power project

While TransWest Express LLC was mired in planning and a painstaking bureaucratic permitting process that included obtaining rights-of-way from hundreds of entities across the 732-mile route, its affiliate Power Company of Wyoming was already doing preliminary construction work on the wind farm that will energize the line. The Anschutz Corporation owns both companies. 

The Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind energy project will span some 320,000 acres in Carbon County and generate 3,000 megawatts of electricity — representing about 28% of Wyoming’s current electrical generation capacity today, according to U.S. Energy Information data. It will be the largest onshore wind energy facility in North America, according to Power Company of Wyoming.

Phased construction of the 732-mile TransWest Express high voltage transmission system will begin later this year, according to company officials. The first phase includes a new substation in Carbon County. From there, crews will erect towers and string high-voltage lines to a station in Delta, Utah. That portion of the project will initially begin moving up to 1,500 megawatts of wind-generated electricity via direct current by December 2027. 

The second phase includes an alternate current line to connect with other powerline systems in southern Nevada. By the end of 2028, the final phases of the system will ramp up to 3,000 megawatts and four system interconnections in the Southwest, according to TransWest Express officials.

“These components will provide important new bulk transmission capacity and connectivity with the PacifiCorp system in Wyoming, with the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power and Intermountain Power systems in Utah, with the NV Energy system in Nevada and with the California Independent System Operator,” Perruso said. 

New dynamic

Aside from transporting power from Wyoming’s Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind facility, TransWest may also serve as an onramp for other energy projects, such as the hydrogen energy proposal at the Intermountain Power Project in Utah, and potentially new nuclear power facilities, according to TransWest officials.

“As Wyoming looks at more carbon-free [energy] resources, we are going to be that pathway that allows those resources to get to the market,” Perruso said. “We’re opening up the new market for renewables and also creating a pathway for future carbon-free resources.”

Some clean energy and climate advocates hail the TransWest Express project as a vital step forward in “decarbonizing” the western grid. Once completed, the transmission line will serve as a “backbone,” increasing connectivity between large demand centers — southern Nevada, Utah and southern California — and rural areas that can generate commercial-scale renewable energy, such as Wyoming’s abundant capacity for wind power generation.

“This is an example of infrastructure that is needed and should be built,” Western Resource Advocates Deputy Director of Regional Markets Vijay Satyal said. “It is definitely very important for the West.”

Together, the TransWest line and CCSM wind facility represent a new dynamic — as well as a gamble that too few entities have been willing or able to take on, according to Satyal and other utility market watchers. It’s a rare move that requires a lot of patience with the permitting process, according to one TransWest Express official, as well as deep pockets, according to others.

Going independent

Most consumers don’t get to choose their electricity provider, whether they’re powering a home in Casper or a chain restaurant in Evanston, but the TransWest project diverges from that paradigm. For example, PacifiCorp, which also operates as Rocky Mountain Power, is one of several electric utility monopolies in Wyoming. It serves captive customers in certain areas because, generally speaking, it owns the power infrastructure exclusively.

As a monopoly, PacifiCorp is regulated by the Wyoming Public Service Commission, as well as service commissions in the five other states it operates. It is required to justify and win approval for its electricity rates. In return, it has a guaranteed, captive ratepayer base to finance system operations and necessary upgrades.

There are variations, such as rural electric co-ops that work under different sets of rules and authorities. But the same geographically limited market for grid infrastructure plays out all over Wyoming, the West and the nation. Although utilities like PacifiCorp are shifting from burning coal to cleaner forms of electric generation within their own service territories, Satyal said, it isn’t enough to achieve the level of connectivity between hundreds of individual service systems to allow for new sources of renewable and low-carbon energy.

The strategy behind Power Company of Wyoming and TransWest Express is to operate as independent merchants, selling and delivering renewable and low-carbon energy to any utility it can reach via the three major operating regions that TransWest will connect to on the western grid.

“We’re broadening the [Wyoming and western] market to include these new interconnections and new customers,” Perruso said. “We’re not constrained by a service territory.

“That also means it’s risky,” Perruso continued. “This is why you don’t see [a lot of] developers doing this, because it’s a risky and an entrepreneurial proposition.”

Big gamble, deep pockets 

Unlike a regulated utility, neither TransWest Express LLC nor Power Company of Wyoming have a captive ratepayer base to leverage upfront financing or a guaranteed paying customer base for ongoing operations. That’s where both the gamble and the deep pockets come in.

Both companies are affiliates of the Denver-based Anschutz Corporation. The worldwide oil, investment, sports, real estate, entertainment and publishing company headed by Philip Anschutz is worth some $10.8 billion, according to Forbes.

“Thanks to the deep pockets or the financial muscle the owners had, they survived a long [permitting] process to comply with all the environmental requirements,” Satyal said. “This is a good example of a company seeing the value proposition and the economic benefits of exporting Wyoming-rich wind and moving into the decarbonization of the future.”

TransWest Express doesn’t yet have customers contracted to take the power it plans to deliver from Wyoming. But, Satyal said, the rush to renewables to meet self-imposed carbon emission standards — particularly in the Southwest — is a good bet with a potentially lucrative payoff.

“God forbid California has a reliability crisis. This line will be a very important lifeline in providing energy — and at high [profit],” he said. “That’s competition at work, which I think is what Wyoming wants to support — a competitive market.”

Wyoming Energy Authority Executive Director Rob Creager agrees.

“Our state is in the business of producing and selling world-class energy,” Creager said. “So projects like TransWest Express opening up entirely new consumer markets for our energy products have tremendous potential for Wyoming.”

The post TransWest Express poised to expand reach of Wyo renewables appeared first on WyoFile.

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The Navajo Nation has for years been locked in contentious negotiations with the state of Arizona over water. With the tribe’s claims not yet settled, the water sources it can access are limited.

The hospital tried tapping an aquifer, but the water was too salty to use. If it could reach an agreement with the state, the tribe would have other options, perhaps even the nearby Little Colorado River. But instead, the Dilkon Medical Center’s grand opening has been postponed, and its doors remain closed.

For the people of the Navajo Nation, the fight for water rights has real implications. Pipelines, wells and water tanks for communities, farms and businesses are delayed or never built.

ProPublica and High Country News reviewed every water-rights settlement in the Colorado River Basin and interviewed presidents, water managers, attorneys and other officials from 20 of the 30 federally recognized basin tribes. This analysis found that Arizona, in negotiating those water settlements, is unique for the lengths it goes to in order to extract concessions that could delay tribes’ access to more reliable sources of water and limit their economic development. The federal government has rebuked Arizona’s approach, and the architects of the state’s process acknowledge it takes too long.

The Navajo Nation has negotiated with all three states where it has land — Arizona, New Mexico and Utah — and completed water settlements with two of them. “We’re partners in those states, New Mexico and Utah,” said Jason John, the director of the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources. “But when it comes to Arizona, it seems like we have different agendas.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1908 that tribes with reservations have a right to water, and most should have priority in times of shortage. But to quantify the amount and actually get that water, they must either go to court or negotiate with the state where their lands are located, the federal government and competing water users. If a tribe successfully completes the process, it stands to unlock large quantities of water and millions of dollars for pipelines, canals and other infrastructure to move that water.

“We’re partners in those states, New Mexico and Utah. But when it comes to Arizona, it seems like we have different agendas.”

But in the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin — which includes seven states, two countries and 30 federally recognized tribes between Wyoming and Mexico — whatever river water a tribe wins through this process comes from the state’s allocation. As a result, states use these negotiations to defend their share of a scarce resource. “The state perceives any strengthening of tribal sovereignty within the state boundaries as a threat to their own jurisdiction and governing authority,” said Torivio Fodder, manager of the University of Arizona’s Indigenous Governance Program and a citizen of Taos Pueblo.

While the process can be contentious anywhere, the large number of tribes in Arizona amplifies tensions: There are 22 federally recognized tribes in the state, and 10 of them have some yet-unsettled claims to water.

Federally recognized tribal reservations and trust land in Arizona

The state — through its water department, courts and elected officials — has repeatedly used the negotiation process to try to force tribes to accept concessions unrelated to water, including a recent attempt to make the state’s approval or renewal of casino licenses contingent on water deals. In these negotiations, which often happen in secret, tribes also must agree to a state policy that precludes them from easily expanding their reservations. And hanging over the talks, should they fail, is an even worse option: navigating the state’s court system, where tribes have been mired in some of the longest-running cases in the country.

Arizona creates “additional hurdles” to settling tribes’ water claims that don’t exist in other states, said Anne Castle, the former assistant secretary for water and science at the U.S. Department of the Interior. “The tribes haven’t been able to get to settlement in some cases because Arizona would impose conditions that they find completely unacceptable,” she said. 

Neither Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican who left office in January after two terms, nor his successor, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, responded to requests for comment on the state’s approach to water-rights negotiations. The Arizona Department of Water Resources, which represents the state in tribal water issues, declined to answer a detailed list of questions.

Shirley Wesaw, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, lives near the not-yet-open Dilkon Medical Center. She eagerly watched as it was built, anticipating a time, after it was completed in June 2022, when her elderly parents would no longer have to spend hours in the car to see their doctors off the reservation. But Wesaw is familiar with the difficulty accessing water in the area. Shared wells are becoming less reliable, she said. It’s most difficult during the summer, when some of her relatives have to wake up as early as 2 a.m. to ensure there’s still water to draw from a community well.

“When it’s low, there’s a long line there,” Wesaw said, “and sometimes it runs out before you get your turn to fill up your barrels.”

Pipe dream

One impact of Arizona’s negotiating strategy was particularly evident at the outset of the pandemic.

In May 2020, as the Navajo Nation faced the highest COVID-19 infection rate in the country, the tribe’s leaders suspected that their limited clean water supply was contributing to the virus’ spread on the reservation. They sent a plea for help to Ducey, the governor at the time.

More than a decade earlier, as the tribe was negotiating its water rights with New Mexico, Arizona officials inserted into federal legislation language blocking the tribe from bringing its New Mexico water into Arizona until it also reaches a settlement with Arizona. John, with the tribe’s water department, said the state “politically maneuvered” to force the tribe to accept its demands.

 A multibillion-dollar pipeline that the federal government is building will connect the Navajo Nation’s capital of Window Rock, Arizona, to water from the San Juan River in New Mexico. But without a settlement in Arizona, the pipe can’t legally carry the water. The restriction left the tribe waiting for new sources of water, which, during the pandemic, made it hard for people to wash their hands in communities where homes lack indoor plumbing.

“For the State of Arizona to limit the access of its citizens to drinking water is unconscionable, especially in the face of the coronavirus pandemic,” then-Navajo President Jonathan Nez and Vice President Myron Lizer wrote to the governor. Nez and Lizer included with their letter a proposed amendment that would change a single sentence in the law. They asked Ducey to help persuade Congress to pass that amendment, allowing enough water for tens of thousands of Diné residents to flow onto the reservation.

Arizona rejected the request, according to multiple former Navajo Nation officials.

The Department of Water Resources did not provide ProPublica and High Country News with public records related to the state’s denial of the Navajo Nation’s request for help getting its water to Window Rock. Hobbs’ office said it could not find the communications relating to the incident.

Land and water

Nearly half of the tribes in Arizona are deadlocked with the state over water rights.

The Pascua Yaqui Tribe has 22,000 enrolled members, but limited land and housing allow only a third to live on its 3.5-square-mile reservation on the outskirts of Tucson. A subdivision still under construction has just started to welcome some Pascua Yaqui families on to the reservation. But the new development isn’t nearly large enough to house the more than 1,000 members on a waiting list. More than 18,000 additional acres of land would be needed to accommodate the tribe’s future population, according to a 2021 study that the tribe commissioned.

But Arizona has used water negotiations with tribes to curtail the expansion of reservations in a way no other state has. 

It’s state policy that, as a condition of reaching a water settlement, tribes agree to not pursue the main method of expanding their reservations. That process, called taking land into trust, is administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and results in the United States taking ownership of the land for the benefit of tribes. Alternatively, tribes can get approval from Congress to take land into trust, but that process can be more fraught, requiring expensive lobbying and travel to Washington, D.C.

The policy will force the Pascua Yaqui “to choose between houses for our families and water certainty for our Tribe and our neighbors,” then-Chairman Robert Valencia wrote to the Department of Water Resources in 2020. “While we understand that our Tribe must make real compromises as part of settlement, this sort of toll for settlement that is unrelated to water is unreasonable and harmful.”

For tribes across Arizona and the region, building homes and expanding economic opportunities to allow their members to move to reservations is a top priority.

The Pueblo of Zuni was the first tribe to agree to Arizona’s land requirement when it settled its water rights with the state in 2003. The Zuni had hoped to take into trust more land they own near their most sacred sites in eastern Arizona, but that will now require an act of Congress. Since the Zuni settlement, all four tribes that have settled water rights claims with Arizona have been required to agree to the same limit on expansion, according to ProPublica and High Country News’ review of every completed settlement in the state.

In a 2020 letter, the Navajo Nation’s then-attorney general called the state’s opposition to expansion “an invasion of the Nation’s sovereign authority over its lands and so abhorrent as to render the settlement untenable.”

The Interior Department, which negotiates alongside tribes, has agreed, objecting on multiple occasions in statements to Congress to Arizona’s use of water negotiations to limit the expansion of reservations. In 2022, as the Hualapai Indian Tribe settled its rights, the department called the state’s policy “contrary to this Administration’s strong support for returning ancestral lands to Tribes.”

Tribes in Arizona often wait decades to secure water rights

Seven federally recognized tribes in Arizona have filed but not settled any of their claims to water rights. The settlement process can take decades and wind through courts and Congress.

Tom Buschatzke, director of the state’s Department of Water Resources, explained the reasoning behind Arizona’s stance to state lawmakers, noting it’s based on Arizona’s interpretation of a century-old federal law that Congress is the only legal avenue for tribes to take land into trust. “The idea of having that tribe go back to Congress is so that there’s transparency in a hearing in front of Congress so the folks in Arizona who might have concerns can get up and express those concerns and then Congress can act accordingly,” he told the Legislature, adding that the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ process, meanwhile, puts the decision in “the hands of a bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.”

The Department of Water Resources has even gone outside water-rights negotiations to challenge reservation expansion without an act of Congress. When the Yavapai-Apache Nation filed a trust land application with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 2001, the department fought it, according to documents obtained via a public records request. The department went on to argue in an appeal that the trust land transfer would infringe on other parties’ water rights. A federal appellate board eventually ruled in favor of the tribe, but the state’s opposition contributed to a five-year delay in completing the land transition.

Pascua Yaqui Chairman Peter Yucupicio has watched non-Indigenous communities grow as he works to secure land and water for his tribe. “They put the tribes through the wringer,” he said.

Arizona’s demands

No one has defined the terms of water negotiations between Arizona and tribes more than former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.

Before entering politics, he was a longtime attorney for the Salt River Project, a water and electric utility serving parts of metro Phoenix. During that time, he lobbied for and consulted on state rules that force tribes to litigate water disputes in state court if they’re unable to reach a settlement. After landing in the Senate, Kyl and his office oversaw meetings where parties hashed out disputes, and he saw his role as that of a mediator. He helped negotiate or pass legislation for the water rights of at least seven tribes.

“I wasn’t taking a side,” Kyl told ProPublica and High Country News, “but I was interested in seeing if they could all reach agreements.”

Tribes, though, often didn’t see him as a neutral party, pointing especially to his handling of negotiations for the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe. He was shepherding a proposed settlement for the tribes through Congress in 2010 when he withdrew support, saying the price of the infrastructure called for in the proposal was too high to get the needed votes. A 2012 version of the tribes’ settlement also died after he added an extension to allow a controversial coal mine to continue operating.

Even when Kyl wasn’t directly involved, tribes were pushed to accept concessions, including limits on how they used their water. Settlements across the basin, including in Arizona, typically contain limits on how much water tribes can market, leaving unused water flowing downstream to the next person in line to use for free.

Even when Kyl wasn’t directly involved, tribes were pushed to accept concessions, including limits on how they used their water.

And several tribes in Arizona were asked to give up the ability to raise legal objections if other users’ groundwater pumping depleted water underneath their reservation.

Tribes have also often had to trade the priority of their water — the order in which supply is cut in times of shortage, such as the current megadrought — to access water. The Bureau of Reclamation recently proposed drastic cuts to Colorado River usage, and, in one scenario based on priority, a quarter of the proposed cuts to allocations would come from tribes in Arizona.

“Some of the Native American folks had a hard time with the concept that they had to give up rights in order to get rights,” Kyl said, adding that tribes risked getting nothing if they kept holding out. “If you’re going to resolve a dispute, sometimes you have to compromise.”

Given the long list of terms Arizona typically pursues, some tribes have been hesitant to settle — which can leave them with an uncertain water supply — so the state has tried to push them.

In 2020, Arizona legislators targeted the casino industry — the economic lifeblood of many tribes. Seven Republicans, including the speaker of the House and Senate president, introduced a bill to bar tribes from obtaining or renewing gaming licenses if they had unresolved water-rights litigation with the state. The bill failed, but Rusty Bowers, the House speaker at the time, said the legislation was intended to put the state on a level playing field with tribes. “Where is our leverage on anything?” Bowers said. If tribes weren’t using the water, then others would do so amid a drought in the growing state, he said.

The state’s economic and population growth has presented tribes with other challenges: They must now negotiate not only with the state and federal governments but also with the businesses, cities and utilities that have, in the interim, made competing claims to water.

It has taken an average of about 18 years for Arizona tribes to reach even a partial water-rights settlement, according to a ProPublica and High Country News analysis of data collected by Leslie Sanchez, a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, who researches the economics of tribal water settlements. The Arizona tribes that filed a claim but are still in the process of settling it have been waiting an average of 34 years.

Chairman Calvin Johnson of the Tonto Apache Tribe — which has a small reservation next to the Arizona mountain town of Payson — remembers, as a child, watching his uncle, then the chairman, begin the fight in 1985 to get a water-rights settlement.

Still without a settlement, the tribe hopes to one day plant orchards for a farming business, build more housing to support its growing population and reduce its reliance on Payson for water, Johnson said. But, faced with Arizona’s demands, the tribe has not yet accepted a deal.

“The feeling that a lot of the older tribal members have is that it’s not ever going to happen, that we probably won’t see it in our lifetime,” Johnson said.

Turning to the courts

Tribes that hope to avoid Arizona’s aggressive tactics can instead go to court — an even riskier gamble that drags on and takes the decision-making out of the hands of the negotiating parties.

The Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians is the only federally recognized tribe in Arizona yet to file a claim for its water. It has a reservation near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, but with only 400 members and minimal resources, it would face a daunting path forward. To settle its rights, the tribe would have to engage in court proceedings to divvy up Kanab Creek, the only waterway that crosses its reservation; bring anyone with a potential competing claim to the creek’s water; find money to complete scientific studies estimating historical flows; and then, because the waterway spans multiple states, possibly face interstate litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It’s about creating and sustaining that permanent homeland,” said Alice Walker, an attorney for the band, but the path between the tribe and that water “boils down to all of those complex, expensive steps.”

Arguing before the Supreme Court on behalf of Arizona and other parties in 1983, Kyl successfully defended a challenge to a law called the McCarran Amendment that allowed state courts to take over jurisdiction of tribal water-rights claims.

“It’s about creating and sustaining that permanent homeland.”

“Tribes are subject to the vagaries of different state politics, different state processes,” explained Dylan Hedden-Nicely, director of the Native American Law Program at the University of Idaho and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. “As a result, two tribes with identical language in their treaties might end up having, ultimately, very different water rights on their reservations.”

Some states, such as Colorado, set up special water courts or commissions to more efficiently settle water rights. Arizona did not. Instead, its court system has created gridlock. Hydrological studies needed from the Department of Water Resources take years to complete, and state laws add confusion over how to distinguish between surface and groundwater.

Two cases in Arizona state court that involve various tribes — one to divide the Gila River and another for the Little Colorado River — have dragged on for decades. The parties, which include every person, tribe or company that has a claim to water from the rivers, number in the tens of thousands. Just one judge, who also handles other litigation, oversees both cases.

Even Kyl now acknowledges the system’s flaws. “Everybody is in favor of speeding up the process,” he said.

After years of negotiations that failed to produce a settlement, the Navajo Nation went to court in 2003 to force a deal. Eventually, the case reached the Supreme Court, which heard it this March. Tribes and legal experts are concerned the court could use the case to target its 1908 precedent that guaranteed tribes’ right to water, a ruling that would risk the future of any tribes with unsettled water claims.

The Navajo Nation, according to newly inaugurated President Buu Nygren, has huge untapped economic potential. “We’re getting to that point in time where we can actually start fulfilling a lot of those dreams and hopes,” he said. “What it’s going to require is water.”

Just across the Arizona-New Mexico border, not far from Nygren’s office in Window Rock, construction crews have been installing the 17 miles of pipeline that could one day deliver large volumes of the tribe’s water to its communities and unlock that potential. Because of Arizona’s changes to the federal law, that day won’t come until the state and the Navajo Nation reach a water settlement.

For now, the pipeline will remain empty.

Anna V. Smith is an associate editor of High Country News. She writes and edits stories on tribal sovereignty and environmental
justice for the Indigenous Affairs desk from Colorado. @annavtoriasmith

Mark Olalde is an environment reporter with ProPublica, where he investigates issues concerning oil, mining, water and other topics around the Southwest.

Umar Farooq is an Ancil Payne Fellow with ProPublica, where he reports on national issues. @UmarFarooq_

We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

This story was originally published by the Rural Monitor.

As a librarian in Peck, Idaho — a self-described “one-woman show” in a community of just under 200 people — Doreen Schmidt’s workdays begin with an unusual routine.

First, Schmidt checks the air quality monitor installed on the side of the library building. Next, she chooses a flag that best matches the results: green for healthy, red for unhealthy, or yellow for in-between.

And at 10 a.m. every Tuesday and Thursday, when the Peck Community Library opens its doors, Schmidt hangs the flag outside, announcing the air quality of the day to students in the one-room schoolhouse across the street, post office-goers, and other community members passing by.

This routine is one of several initiatives that the Peck library and eight others in rural northern Idaho have adopted in partnership with the Nez Perce Tribe’s Air Quality Program in an effort to raise awareness of the health risks posed by wildfire smoke and steps that local residents can take to protect themselves against it.

“We librarians became informed [about air quality] so that we can inform our communities,” said Schmidt, who serves as branch manager of the Peck Community Library. “The partnerships and the connections we make through the libraries are really important, because the library is the hub of our community.”

Across the western U.S., wildfire smoke is increasingly recognized as an urgent public health issue for urban and rural dwellers alike. But rural communities face some unique challenges when it comes to collecting and spreading information about wildfire smoke and its health impacts — and, in response, uniquely rural solutions are emerging.

“Smoke has become more and more prevalent as a topic of concern in rural communities, but there’s still a lag” when it comes to making sure rural residents know how best to protect themselves against smoke exposure, said Savannah D’Evelyn, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences. “We need to be thinking about smoke just as much as we’re thinking about fire.”

Rural Risks

Unhealthy air quality can affect any person who is exposed: immediate impacts of breathing in smoke may include coughing, difficulty breathing, headaches, irritated sinuses, and a fast heartbeat, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But some populations are especially at risk, including the elderly, children, pregnant women, and people with conditions including asthma, heart disease, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), a rising cause of death in rural America. Wildfire smoke can also negatively impact mental health in rural communities, a study from University of Washington researchers found, with rural study participants reporting increased anxiety, depression, isolation, and a lack of motivation during smoke episodes.

As public health researchers learn more about the physical and mental health impacts of wildfire smoke, including in rural communities, a clearer picture of who is most at risk has started to develop, according to Elizabeth Walker, PhD, an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences and one of the authors of the mental health study. People who tend to be particularly vulnerable during smoke episodes include lower-income residents, those with outdoor occupations, and people experiencing housing insecurity or homelessness, said Walker, who is also the founder of Clean Air Methow, a nonprofit program that provides information and resources to help residents of Washington’s rural Okanogan County protect themselves against unhealthy air quality.

For these particularly at-risk groups, avoiding smoke exposure altogether is often not an option. Rural-based industries such as agriculture, forestry, and outdoor recreation often revolve around outdoor work, exposing employees to unhealthy air throughout the workday. And in small communities that lack indoor public gathering spaces with clean air, residents without housing — or who don’t have sufficient air filtration systems in their homes — may have nowhere to go to escape the smoke; in places that do have community spaces with clean air, it may not be practical or affordable for some residents to travel long distances from their homes to use them.

In some rural communities where wood-burning stoves are commonly used during colder months, smoke is inescapable even in winter: residents may experience exposure year-round, compounding the health impacts without seasonal relief.

“If people are getting a much higher exposure, either due to outdoor work or to their housing conditions, those folks really need to be targeted for providing whatever interventions we can,” Walker said.

Monitoring the Problem

For many rural communities, protecting against wildfire smoke exposure is made significantly more difficult by the fact that there is no way of knowing exactly how much smoke is in the air on any given day.

Information about air quality is often limited in rural areas, with air quality monitors more densely concentrated around larger population centers. The result is what D’Evelyn refers to as “monitoring deserts”: places where smoke is palpable in the air but where a lack or shortage of monitors leaves exact air quality levels unknown, making it more difficult for communities to gauge what sort of health protection measures are needed.

“We [air quality researchers] tend to focus on areas that are densely populated, because you already have air quality issues there from things like traffic and industry,” said Danilo Dragoni, PhD, Bureau Chief of the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection’s (NDEP) Air Quality Planning Bureau. “In rural communities where only indirect methods of measuring air quality are available, the understanding is that air quality is relatively good. But when you have wildfires and smoke, you go from a decent air quality to a very bad air quality in the range of a few days.”

In Nevada, smoke from a series of wildfires near the California-Nevada border in recent years served as a wake-up call of sorts for state officials, Dragoni said. During these episodes, the bureau received phone calls from emergency managers and school district officials in rural northern Nevada requesting air quality information, as information found online “didn’t really match what they were experiencing on the ground.”

“We realized that the coverage in terms of air quality monitoring was not enough,” Dragoni said. “Wildfire smoke is very unpredictable and can change very rapidly. So they started calling us to say, ‘Hey, can you give us more information?’ And we realized that we couldn’t really do it.”

To start to fill these gaps, NDEP purchased dozens of PurpleAir sensors — air quality sensors that are relatively inexpensive and easily installed, but less accurate than regulatory-grade monitors — to loan to rural communities across the state at no cost. The department has also partnered with the Desert Research Institute (DRI) — the nonprofit research arm of Nevada’s state higher education system — on a grant-funded project to improve and expand wildfire smoke air quality monitoring infrastructure and public information resources for rural communities statewide. The program, which began in 2021 and is ongoing, included the installation of roughly 60 smart technology air quality sensors as well as additional communication resources to identify gaps in public knowledge around the health risks of wildfire smoke in rural communities and develop new educational materials.

“Risk communication messaging around wildfire smoke is directly informed by air quality data,” said Kristin VanderMolen, PhD, an assistant research professor of atmospheric sciences at DRI. “And so for these counties where there isn’t quality data, messaging becomes difficult because, you know, what do you say?”

In Pershing County, Nevada — a county of roughly 6,500 people spanning more than 6,000 square miles — a lack of reliable air quality monitoring made measuring air quality difficult during wildfire season.

“Other than looking outside and seeing that your visibility was reduced, there was no quantitative method for determining how bad the smoke was,” said Sean Burke, Director of Emergency Management for Pershing County.

But the health impacts were evident, especially during the smokiest part of the season, Burke said: As an EMS worker, he saw a noticeable increase in asthma and COPD exacerbations when the smoke was thick.

Participating in the DRI-NDEP project has provided Pershing County with new tools to measure smoke particles in the air. Making sure that local residents understand the extent of the health risks involved — and how they can best protect themselves — can still be challenging, though, Burke said.

“I talked to one old fellow who said, ‘If I want to know how the smoke is, I’ll look out my window,’” Burke recalled. “I think, generally speaking, people get it: There’s smoke, and it’s not great. But I don’t think they understand necessarily just exactly how bad it can be, particularly if you’re in one of those sensitive health categories.”

‘Harnessing Toughness’

Smoke exposure levels tend to be higher in rural communities, according to D’Evelyn, in part because fires are often closer to home. The nearer and bigger the fire, the worse the smoke episode likely will be — but the more likely it is that air quality will be overshadowed by concerns about the fire itself.

“Fire is always the top concern because in rural communities, a fire can come right through and burn down your home,” D’Evelyn said. “And so this concept of being concerned about smoke exposure has been secondary on people’s minds — they’re much more worried about fire, which makes sense.”

A “long-term historical familiarity and cultural tolerance for smoke” in many rural communities in the West may also contribute to the perception that smoke isn’t an urgent public health issue, Walker said.

“When something is familiar to you, you tend to underestimate the risk that it poses,” she said. “The classic example is that people routinely think that being in a car is safer than being in an airplane. Smoke is woven into our experiences here, so it’s often not seen as something that can cause severe health risks.”

A public outreach campaign by Clean Air Methow over the past year has focused on changing these perceptions, using messaging that leans into what were identified through community focus groups and surveys as the “top three values” of the region: determination, grit, and family.

“Toughness is a strength to harness in rural communities, and we’ve tried to design the campaign around the idea that toughness means protecting and caring for other people and promoting awareness of who the most vulnerable groups are,” Walker said. “Maybe someone in your family or your neighbor falls into one of those vulnerable categories, even if you don’t, and they might need some help taking steps to protect their well-being and health.”

Within the Nevada communities participating in the DRI-NDEP project, “people are generally familiar with wildfire smoke risk exposure, and they’re generally familiar with who tends to be more vulnerable or at risk,” VanderMolen said. “But when it comes to mitigation strategies, there is a little bit of fine-tuning to be done.”

In rural northern Idaho, finding — and communicating — the most effective mitigation strategies has meant taking into consideration the unique needs of the region.

“Five or ten years ago, the messaging was just, ‘Stay indoors,’” said Mary Fauci, an Environmental Specialist with the Nez Perce Air Quality Program. “But many people up here don’t have air conditioning and have to keep the windows open to cool their house down at night, which brings in wildfire smoke. So the general acknowledgement was that we need to either change the messaging or provide means of help to get people to change so that they can be ready and resilient.”

Trusted Sources

In rural environments, information about smoke and its health impacts may be most effectively disseminated by sources close to home, research has found.

In a series of interviews and focus group discussions with residents of rural and tribal communities in north central Washington, D’Evelyn and other University of Washington researchers found that participants generally trusted local sources of information — such as tribal or local governments, or informal community communication networks — more than non-local sources, such as the state or federal government agencies. The research was conducted and published in collaboration with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and the Okanogan River Airshed Partnership.

Interviewees also “overwhelmingly” described local and community channels — such as community information boards, local news, friends and family, and social media — as their main sources of information on air quality and smoke risk, according to the report.

Within any given community, “networks of communication are super varied,” D’Evelyn said. “There will be Facebook groups that 30% of the community is incredibly active in, and then there’s another percentage of the community that doesn’t even have internet access at their home and doesn’t want to. Making sure that you’re tapping all of the different communication networks that are necessary is really important.”

In Pershing County, a lack of real-time media coverage has made it difficult to keep community members informed about air quality and health risks in a timely way, Burke said. With the nearest television station in Reno, roughly 100 miles away, the local newspaper — which publishes once a week — is the primary source of local news.

“If you’re in a larger metropolitan area, you would expect to see something on the local news about hazardous levels of smoke, but we kind of fall outside of the major reporting area,” Burke said. “Our single largest challenge is getting the word out effectively.”

To do this, Pershing County and other rural communities have had to find alternative methods for communicating risk to the public. In Pershing County, those methods include posting information in public places — such as senior centers, community centers, and hospitals — and on social media, though spotty or nonexistent internet access in some rural areas can make the latter more difficult. In another Nevada county participating in the DRI-NDEP project, traveling U.S. Forest Service field technicians plan to deliver pamphlets with smoke information to particularly remote communities without reliable cell phone service or internet access.

To reach a diverse range of Okanogan County residents, Clean Air Methow has taken a diverse approach to its public messaging that includes billboards, print materials, radio spots, bar coasters, and social media posts. As part of a recent outreach campaign funded by the Washington State Department of Ecology, the organization and regional partners distributed more than 3,000 copies of a Smoke Ready Checklist, which lists instructions and best practices for minimizing smoke exposure — including setting up a do-it-yourself air cleaning system at home, making a plan for vulnerable household members, gathering N95 masks, and ideas for staying “mentally strong and engaged” throughout wildfire season — in both English and Spanish.

With funding from an Environmental Protection Agency grant, Clean Air Methow also made box fan air filters available for free to community members, with more than a dozen pop-up displays with information about how to get one set up at health clinics and social service organizations throughout the county.

Partnerships with “trusted partners” in the community, such as healthcare and social service providers and fire safety entities, have been key to Clean Air Methow’s success in distributing information about smoke exposure and protection strategies, according to Walker.

“Everything we have ever accomplished has only been on the basis of those strong partner networks and relationships,” she said.

A Community Effort

In northern Idaho, the Nez Perce Air Quality Program has found a different kind of trusted partner in the region’s community libraries.

The program began by approaching a handful of libraries in 2012, to ask whether one of the program’s interns could host presentations on air quality safety as part of the libraries’ summer reading programs. From there, the relationships grew, with more libraries signing on to host summer reading presentations on air quality and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects.

“Libraries have a lot more than books, and I think communities and the public are starting to realize that there’s other things they can do,” said Johna Boulafentis, an Environmental Specialist with the Nez Perce ERWM Air Quality Program. “Following through, showing up, and having our intern be there started to really build that trust.”

The Nez Perce Tribe has had a robust air monitoring system in place on its reservation since the early 2000s. But some of the area’s smallest communities, including Peck, were without their own air monitors — leaving mini monitoring deserts in a landscape where air quality can change abruptly from town to town.

When the Air Quality Program approached Schmidt in 2021 to ask whether the Peck Community Library would be interested in installing a PurpleAir Monitor and putting out a flag each day to help inform community members about air quality, Schmidt says she was “thrilled.”

Students at Peck Elementary School across the street — a one-room schoolhouse with 34 students ranging from kindergarten through sixth grade — have also embraced the program enthusiastically, using the flag to determine whether it’s safe to play outside for recess during fire season. At noon, when the students come over to the library for programming, they check on the PurpleAir sensor and help Schmidt to update the flag if needed. And “at the end of the day, after school, they’ll run across the street to see if they can check on it again,” Schmidt said with a laugh.

The Nez Perce Air Quality Program has expanded its partnership with participating libraries to include other community outreach efforts in addition to the flag program, such as hosting “Build Your Own Sensor” workshops for local junior high school students and demonstrations for the public on how to build an air filter out of a box fan. Box fan air filters are displayed inside the library entrances as well, with librarians available to answer questions about air quality.

Libraries aren’t the only community partners that the Nez Perce Air Quality Program relies on to help spread public awareness. The program has worked with health agencies, school districts, tribal housing entities, and others to share air quality information and teach strategies for minimizing smoke exposure and has distributed educational materials throughout the community in both English and the Nez Perce language.

But the multigenerational scope of community libraries gives them a unique ability to reach people of all ages and walks of life, Schmidt said.

“If you ever want adults to pay attention, you teach the kids,” Schmidt said. “They bring it home and they really want to make sure that their parents or grandparents, or whoever their caregiver is, are understanding what they’re learning.”

While the impact of the program is difficult to measure in numbers one year in, there is anecdotal evidence that adults are paying attention as well. Several older men living in Peck have asked Schmidt to help them install air quality apps on their cell phones after seeing the colorful flags out front, and at least one library visitor reported back that he had made his own box fan air filter after seeing the display.

Perhaps the most notable indicator of the program’s impact, however, showed up on Peck’s Main Street after the flag program began: One man, noticing that the flags were only updated the two days a week that the library was open, made his own flags to display in his front yard on the days the library was closed.

“To see that person using his own saw and equipment and taking all those steps to display a flag in his yard, and then going into a library and seeing that they have their fan filter going, has been really inspiring,” Boulafentis said. “It makes you want to say, ‘Hey, what should we try together next?’”

“For the community to get excited about it and then see other people participating,” Schmidt added, “brings out the good in us all.”

The post Rural Communities Find Unique Solutions to Protect Against Wildfire Smoke Exposure appeared first on The Daily Yonder.