A collared pronghorn took her last breath on Feb. 16. The adult doe’s remains were found on the south end of the Pinedale Mesa.

Another marked-and-tracked doe died a couple days later, just 500 yards away. A week later the third adult female went, her final resting place a mile or so north of her migratory compatriots.

With that, every collared animal that traveled the celebrated Path of the Pronghorn in 2022 was dead.

It was a grim sign for a migratory pronghorn population that has thrived in recent years. Now, following the deadliest winter on record in which a disease outbreak compounded fatalities, the fate of the long-distance travelers that winter in the Green River basin but sojourn for the summer in Grand Teton National Park, the National Elk Refuge and along the Gros Ventre River is unclear. Wildlife scientists aren’t sure how many remain.

“Anything’s possible, right?” Brandon Scurlock, a regional wildlife coordinator for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said. “But I would have to think that some of those animals made it and will make that migration.”

But the outlook is grim, with the large majority of animals from the larger Sublette Herd likely dead, according to Scurlock. Pronghorn in the herd were being closely studied as the state considers whether to recognize and protect a route that remains undesignated due to political pressure from industry groups. The monitoring effort tracked 83 does throughout the herd as recently as December. By Tuesday, when Scurlock spoke to WyoFile, just 21 of them were still alive — including zero of the Jackson Hole migrants.

“We lost 75% of our collared animals,” he said. “It’s erroneous to [extrapolate] that 75% to the entire herd, but that’s our best indication of survival. If we did have 400 or 500 [Jackson Hole migrants], our best guess is that 75% of those might be gone.”

In Jackson Hole pronghorns’ favor is that the migratory population has thrived of late. Counts in 2020 and 2021 were the highest on record.

If the so-called Path of the Pronghorn does live on, it’s all but assured that drastically fewer animals will make the journey, which cuts through gas fields, skirts coming-soon subdivisions and treads over a mountain pass.

Lost before 

An archaeological site along the migration route at Trappers Point holds evidence that humans have hunted pronghorn along the path as long as 6,000 years ago.

But even within that long history, the Path of the Pronghorn has faded before.

Joel Berger, a Wildlife Conservation Society researcher and former Jackson Hole resident, was part of the multi-agency research team around the turn of the century that first mapped the route. The science led to the Bridger-Teton National Forest amending its management plan, in essence creating the first federally designated migration corridor in the United States. The southern reaches remain undesignated — to the chagrin of some wildlife advocates.

“Early reports were a couple of thousand around the turn of the century, then they went extinct locally in Jackson,” Berger said.

The migration route was lost, he estimated, between about 1910 and the 1950s.

“The pronghorn were just all shot out,” Berger said, “because we didn’t have good conservation in those days.”

Green River basin pronghorn evidently learned the ancient route into modern day Teton County again some four decades later. Berger likened them finding their way back to a pinball player’s inevitable outcome.

“What happens? Ultimately, the ball ends up in the hole, right?” Berger said. “From our GPS data we know they were bouncing all over, but the only access into Jackson was the single route.”

Fast forward to the present, and management of the pronghorn herd is much more deliberate and science-based.

Game and Fish and the National Park Service not only survey the Jackson segment annually, the state agency keeps close tabs on numbers within the entire herd, which spans western Wyoming from Green River to northern Grand Teton National Park. The population breached 60,000 in the early 2000s but was last estimated at 43,000, Scurlock said.

In past bad winters over the last couple decades the herd has fared OK.

“We know we did lose some pronghorn in ‘16-’17, but this winter was unprecedented in terms of the number of days below zero and the depth of the snow on the winter range. ” Scurlock said. “We just didn’t see these large foci of carcasses [in ‘16-’17].”

In the wake of winter 2022-’23, there are conspicuous concentrations of death scattered throughout the region. Motorists can see them without leaving their vehicle in places like the East Fork hill, located on the east side of Highway 191 between Farson and Boulder.

“We’re seeing these clusters of animals on the landscape that are now dead,” Scurlock said. “Rock Springs to Boulder, over to Big Piney, down by Kemmerer.”

Outbreaks of mycoplasma bovis, a new affliction in the Green River basin that causes a deadly respiratory disease, have been observed in the hardest-hit areas, he said. The carcass of the first Jackson Hole migrant that died this winter was shipped to a Laramie laboratory and tested positive for the disease.

The verdict

There are a few bright spots better for survival along the southern fringes of the Sublette Herd’s high desert home, Scurlock said. Those areas, he said, include the Red Desert between the Killpecker Sand Dunes and the town of Superior and the bluffy country overlooking Interstate 80 near James Town.

Although it’s an open question what remains of the Jackson Hole segment, answers should come through in the next couple weeks.

“In a nutshell, we won’t know until they show up in June,” Game and Fish wildlife biologist Aly Courtemanch said.

State and federal agencies will partner to do a more-thorough census of what’s left later in the summer. Game and Fish has drastically reduced hunting opportunities to give the herd its best shot at recovery. Doe and fawn hunting — which has the most impact on populations — has been eliminated in all hunt areas roamed by the herd, Scurlock said.

“They are fairly fecund, and they can bounce back pretty quick just because they have twins as the norm,” he said. “Our plan is to give the herd the maximum opportunity to bounce back by eliminating that reproductive harvest.”

Still, the population’s starting point will likely be significantly lower than wildlife managers have seen in their lifetimes. They’re beginning to see what that looks like.

Game and Fish biologist Gary Fralick’s territory doesn’t cover the Sublette Pronghorn Herd, but he drove through a swath of its habitat on Monday on his way to take a look at what’s left of the Wyoming Range Mule Deer Herd.

Typically there’d be “several hundred” pronghorn foraging this time of year on pastureland and in the sagebrush from the Hoback Rim down to Daniel Junction, he said.

Fralick, a 30-year veteran at his biologist post, saw only 11 animals. Their absence, he said, isn’t because of a delayed migration. It’s because they’re dead.

“Since I’ve been around, in that country it’s always the pronghorn leading the deer,” Fralick said. “And they’re not there.”

The post Fatal winter puts ‘Path of the Pronghorn’ on shaky ground appeared first on WyoFile.

Listen to this story on The California Report

Allensworth, a farmworker town of about 500 people in California’s San Joaquin Valley, sits at the edge of an area called the Tulare Lake Basin, a patchwork of scrub brush and irrigated farmland that’s part of the most productive agricultural region in the nation. Last March, California’s barrage of atmospheric rivers overwhelmed the area, flooding pistachio orchards and swamping communities, and Allensworth found itself all but surrounded by a shallow sea. Residents were told to evacuate. They were also told that this flood was just the beginning.

California is fighting a slow-motion disaster, one that could become its largest flood in recent history. As the near-record snowpack in the Sierra mountains melts, the water making its way through the foothills is pooling in the basin, reviving a lake that had long disappeared. This process is expected to accelerate over the coming weeks and months, and it could take up to two years to subside. And while the return of Tulare Lake could devastate everyone in the region, historically disenfranchised communities like Allensworth are uniquely vulnerable. 

“It’s a horrific situation,” said Denise Kadara, an Allensworth community leader and the vice chair of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board. “We’re here like sitting ducks, waiting for the water to come and flood us out.”

Part of Allensworth’s problem stems from the politics of water: For over a hundred years, water in the Tulare Lake Basin has been controlled and hoarded by a handful of powerful landowners, usually at the expense of everyone else. The Basin’s water management system still favors those powerful landowners, leaving the town with little recourse when floodwaters approach. 

‘I don’t need a whole bunch of people to break the law’

That was evident one windy night in March, when Allensworth residents Takoa Kadara and his father, Kayode, called an emergency town meeting. The goal was simple: to keep the water massing in the basin from pouring into people’s homes.

At the time, water was flowing toward town through culverts that run under railroad tracks to the east. The culverts are on private property, and the tracks that run on top of them are owned by BNSF Railway, one of the top freight transportation companies in the nation. The last time community members tried to block the culverts with rocks, gravel and plywood, a BNSF employee called the police, then removed the makeshift dam they had built. 

Now the group wanted to protect the community, but knew they might be at risk of breaking the law. Residents only saw two options: act illegally, or not at all, and they couldn’t come to an agreement.

“If you guys disagree with this solution, then let’s go home,” Kayode Kadara said.

“No, it’s not, ‘let’s go home!” his son, Takoa Kadara, said, “let’s come up with another solution.”

“I’ll just say it like it is,” said one resident, who declined to give his name. “If I’m gonna break the law, I don’t need a whole bunch of people to break the law [with me]. Ten minutes? We’re gone.”

Allensworth residents have tried to block the culverts legally—many, many times. But BNSF wouldn’t give them permission to do it, and so far, the town hasn’t been able to find a government agency with the power to override the corporation’s decision, or persuade it to reconsider. Their local stormwater district doesn’t have jurisdiction over the railroad’s property, and representatives from several state agencies, including Caltrans, CalFire and the Department of Water Resources, said they couldn’t do anything either, even though community members said those agencies agreed that the water spilling through the culverts is a problem. 

BNSF did not respond to requests for comment, but in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, a company spokesperson claimed that blocking the culverts could damage their tracks.

When Allensworth was put under a mandatory evacuation order back in March, the Kadaras and most of their neighbors refused to leave. Who would defend their town if they did?

“The water flowing is natural,” said Denise Kadara. But added it’s also determined by men who say “‘This is where they want the water to go.’”

The history behind today’s water politics

To understand the power dynamics in the Tulare Lake Basin—and how Allensworth ended up on the losing side of it—we have to go back to when the town was founded and Tulare Lake was still alive. In 1908, Lt. Col. Allen Allensworth was a formerly enslaved person who had become the highest ranking Black military officer of his time. As Jim Crow tightened its grip throughout the South, he moved to California to create what he hoped would become the “Tuskegee of the West,” a thriving Black community and college town. Founded by a dream team of Black doctors, professors and farmers, the community of Allensworth became the first town in California to be founded, financed and governed by Black Americans.

Allensworth picked a spot near Tulare Lake, which used to be the largest lake west of the Mississippi. Accounts from the late 1800s describe it as shallow, thick with tule reeds, and ringed by marshland. Herds of elk waded through the shallows, and millions of migratory birds flocked to its shores every year.

But by the time Lt. Col. Allensworth got there, the lake was rapidly disappearing—it had been for years.

“Geologists call that end of the San Joaquin Valley one of the most engineered landscapes in human history,” said Mark Arax, a journalist and expert in the Central Valley’s history and water politics. “[The] human hand has altered that land in a way that few places have been altered.”

Allensworth’s residents weren’t the only people who’d settled along Tulare Lake. A group of white landowners had settled there, too—some of them descending from slave-owning families.

“Many of them were Southerners who’d come from the Confederate states,” said Arax. “They arrived here and they started grabbing the snow melt out of those rivers, and then diverting that onto their farmland.”

In the 1920s, two particularly bold landowner families, the Boswells and the Salyers, made a move on the lakebed itself. The soil at the bottom was dark and unusually rich; it’d be the perfect place for a farm, if the lake wasn’t in the way. So they drained it and diverted the water for irrigation. According to Arax, those diversions ended up drying up the lake completely.

Meanwhile, Allensworth couldn’t get enough water to sustain itself, no matter how hard the community tried. White farmers diverted a river they relied on. A white-owned company refused to dig the community’s wells, but it was more than happy to dig wells for a white town nearby. By the 1920s, a lot of Allensworth’s original settlers had moved away. And by the 1940s, the white landowners in the Tulare Lake Basin had become some of the most powerful farmers in the country, and had successfully seized control of the water for themselves.

Those long-established power dynamics are still at work in the region. Today, Allensworth is a farmworker town where the tap water isn’t safe to drink. Many of its neighbors are large corporations and wealthy farmers, and they control many local agencies—like water and reclamation districts—which make decisions about who gets water in dry years and what to do when the floods come.

“You have these quasi-government agencies, but they’re controlled by the biggest landowners,” says Arax. “It’s a no man’s land in a lot of ways, and that’s the way it’s operated. It resorts to its own devices all the time.”

The Tulare Lake Basin also has a long history of levee sabotage. Historically, when the basin has flooded, some farmers cut levees and blocked canals to protect their land, but it also threatened the town with flooding. This is still happening today. Denise Kadara remembers getting the news from their local stormwater manager in March that a levy on the west side of town had been intentionally breached, prompting calls to evacuate.

As communities like Allensworth brace for the snowmelt this spring—and the floods they know are coming—this history of water theft, sabotage, and discrimination is always in the backs of their minds. 

Although residents at that March meeting decided against blocking the railroad culverts, they haven’t stayed quiet. Allensworth’s community leaders have been calling every government official they can think of, trying to find someone who can help them. And in the past few weeks, Takoa and his family say some politicians and government agencies have started to respond.

CalFire’s emergency response team blocked the levee that was allegedly sabotaged, as well as other breaches, and saved the town from flooding. California Gov. Gavin Newsom visited the community in April and promised to send more resources. Allensworth residents are used to the system in this basin working against them, but they hope that’s finally changing. How state agencies act may be the only thing standing between Allensworth and catastrophic flooding.

“We need all the help we can get, from every agency, and every person that wants to help and believes in communities like ours,” Denise Kadara said.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte has signed into law a bill that bars the state from considering climate impacts in its analysis of large projects such as coal mines and power plants. 

House Bill 971 was among the most controversial energy- and environment-related proposals before the Legislature this session, drawing more than 1,000 comments, 95% of which expressed opposition to the measure. HB 971 bars state regulators like the Montana Department of Environmental Quality from including analyses of greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts, both within and outside Montana’s borders, when conducting comprehensive reviews of large projects. It builds off of a decade-old law barring the state from including “actual or potential impacts that are regional, national, or global in nature” in environmental reviews. 

Gianforte signed HB 971 into law May 10 over opposition from climate and environmental groups that had argued that the measure hinders the state’s ability to respond to the crisis of our time: the atmosphere-warming emissions of greenhouse gases that are shrinking the state’s snowpack, reducing summer and fall streamflows, and contributing to catastrophic flooding and longer, more intense wildfire seasons. Opponents had also argued that the majority of Montanans believe in human-caused climate change and want meaningful climate action. 

Results from a 2022 “Conservation in the West” poll of 416 registered voters in Montana bear this out. Three-fifths of those polled said there is enough evidence of climate change to support action and called for a transition to renewable energy.  

Anne Hedges with the Montana Environmental Information Center said the Legislature is “hiding its head in the sand” by passing bills like HB 971, and she anticipates it will be the subject of a constitutional lawsuit.

“Climate change is real, it matters, the climate is part of our environment, and we cannot ignore the changes that are occurring,” Hedges said. “Ignoring it doesn’t make it better. It will only make things worse and make it more difficult and expensive to deal with later.”

“Our families are already suffering from an increase in the number of sweltering summer days, longer wildfire and smoke seasons, and historic drought,” Winona Bateman, executive director of Families for a Livable Climate, wrote in an email to Montana Free Press. “I am not sure how Gov. Gianforte imagines we will do our part to address these growing impacts, or pay for them, if we’re not working to eliminate the root cause. Why would we wait for federal regulations to be part of the solution?”

Proponents of the measure, including its sponsor, Rep. Josh Kassmier, R-Fort Benton, argued that by pushing back on a recent ruling revoking a NorthWestern Energy gas plant permit, HB 971 underscores that it’s lawmakers, not judges, who set policy. Other proponents, including the Treasure State Resources Association and the Montana Petroleum Association, asserted that HB 971 protects state agencies from an “unworkable” mandate to measure greenhouse gas emissions and that any such regulation properly belongs under federal regulatory frameworks such as the Clean Air Act.

Gianforte spokesperson Kaitlin Price echoed this assessment in a statement to Montana Free Press.

“House Bill 971 re-established the longstanding, bipartisan policy that analysis conducted pursuant to the Montana Environmental Policy Act does not include analysis of greenhouse gas emissions,” Price said. “The bill would allow evaluation of GHGs if it is required under federal law or if Congress amends the Clean Air Act to include carbon dioxide as a regulated pollutant.”

During a committee hearing on the bill last month, Sen. Jen Gross, D-Billings, asked Kassmier if he believes humans cause climate change.

“I’m not a scientist, so I’m not going to answer that,” he replied.

For his part, Gianforte told Montana Free Press in a 2021 interview that he does believe in human-caused climate change. He said “American ingenuity” can help mitigate it and argued for the government to remove friction in the marketplace.. 

The bill also comes as a Helena judge is weighing a case brought by 16 youth plaintiffs asking the judicial branch to require the state to measure and regulate greenhouse gas emissions. That lawsuit, Held vs. Montana, is set for a 10-day hearing that will start June 12.

It also comes as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers a rule that would expand regulations dealing with power plants’ emissions of greenhouse gasses. If passed, the rule would require power plants like the coal-fired plant in Colstrip to capture 90% of its carbon emissions by 2038.

The post Gianforte signs bill banning state agencies from analyzing climate impacts  appeared first on Montana Free Press.

More than 90% of Americans access drinking water through public water systems, which are regulated at the state and local level, according to the government-standardized data portal USA FACTS.

During 2021, there were 153,501 total water quality violations across all U.S. states and territories. Of the total violations, more than 63% were found because of issues with monitoring and reporting by regulatory agencies. 

The high proportion of monitoring, reporting and public notification violations raises questions about how well tens of thousands of public water supply systems test for and report potential health violations to EPA and the public, according to a USA FACTS report released in November 2022.

While the total number of violations in 2021 is lower than the 10-year average, the frequency of drinking water violations does not appear to be decreasing over time, according to the report.

In states such as Iowa and other big agricultural states — with extensive crop production and livestock farming, which involves the use of fertilizer, pesticides and manure — runoff from these activities contributes to water pollution. 

These pollutants, particularly nitrates and phosphates, can enter water bodies, causing problems such as harmful algal blooms, oxygen depletion and degradation of aquatic ecosystems.

The post Most water quality violations are from monitoring and reporting issues appeared first on Investigate Midwest.

Move aims for transparency and to identify struggling water systems.

The water tower in Sunset, Louisiana. The town’s water system received a D grade in the state’s first report card. Photo courtesy of Patrick under Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA 2.0

By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue – May 11, 2023

The post Louisiana Becomes First State to Issue Drinking Water Report Cards appeared first on Circle of Blue.

The Bonneville Power Administration has confirmed Cascade Locks mayor’s concerns about proposed new construction

More, please: Located five miles downriver from Cascade Locks, Bonneville Dam generates electricity to power approximately 900,000 homes. Photo: Kevin Wingert/BPA

By Nathan Gilles, May 3, 2023. In March, Columbia Insight published a lengthy investigative story on a new $100 million data center proposed to be built by a startup company called Roundhouse in the small Columbia River Gorge town of Cascade Locks, Ore. Our reporting addressed many locals’ concerns about the company, its CEO Stephen D. King and its proposed data center.

Among other issues, Columbia Insight discovered that King owed over $1 million to former business partners due a previous troubled business deal in the Gorge.

What Columbia Insight was unable investigate at the time were concerns residents said they had about the data center’s expected energy usage, and statements made by King that local electricity rates would not increase due to the data center’s added electric load.

The most noteworthy Cascade Locks resident to dispute King’s claims has been Cascade Locks Mayor Cathy Fallon.

Fallon has said publicly that the new data center will both raise the cost of electricity for the City of Cascade of Locks and make the city contractually obligated to continue paying that higher cost even if the data center should close its doors and stop consuming electricity.

King has publicly taken issue with these claims.

However, representatives from Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), which provides power to the City of Cascade Locks, have now confirmed to Columbia Insight that BPA does plan to charge the city a higher rate for its electricity due in part to the new data center’s power usage.

BPA representatives also confirmed that as a condition of its contract with BPA, the city will be responsible—at least in the short term—for some, though not all, of the increased costs associated with the data center should the data center close.

Complicating the issue is the fact that even without the data center online and consuming electricity, BPA will be raising the city’s power rates in the upcoming fiscal year starting in October 2023.

According to a recent City of Cascade Locks memo obtained by Columbia Insight, these new increased rates are expected to cost the city an additional $570,000 a year.

And BPA isn’t the only utility raising its rates. Pacific Power and Portland General Electric are also increasing their rates.

However, $570,000 in additional costs pales in comparison to the nearly $5 million in additional costs the City of Cascade Locks will be expected to pay when the data center is fully online, according to estimates made by BPA.

Yet how and if the city’s many electricity customers, including local households, could end up paying for this increase is uncertain.

What is certain is the city is currently exploring the idea of raising its rates on its customers to cover this year’s rate increase with BPA.

What’s also certain is the data center will significantly increase the amount of power consumed in Cascade Locks.

Roughly double power consumption … for starters

The City of Cascade Locks currently provides roughly 4.5 megawatts (MW) of electricity a month to its local businesses and households. In winter, as temperatures drop and furnaces turn on, that number can reach as high as 7 MW, according to numbers provided by the City of Cascade Locks.

When complete, the data center is expected to consume roughly twice as much electricity as the town’s current households and businesses combined.

This power won’t come online all at once, but in phases.

In the first phase, Roundhouse will operate a data center out of the Flex 6 building, an existing Port of Cascade Locks building that now lies empty.

Roundhouse is expected to use 3.6 to 4 MW of electricity a month at Flex 6, according to previous statements made by King.

For phase two of the data center, Roundhouse hopes to build a second facility on a nearby 10-acre empty lot. This facility is expected to need an additional 7.2 MW a month, for a total energy usage of about 10-11 MW, according to previous statements made by King.

Center of attention: The proposed data center would be built in the Flex 6 Building in Cascade Locks, which is currently unoccupied. Photo: Jurgenhessphotography

But Roundhouse’s power consumption might not end there.

At an Oct. 27, 2022, Port of Cascade Locks commission meeting, King told the Port commissioners if the two facilities proved successful, Roundhouse would consider building a third facility for its data center, raising the company’s total electricity consumption to 25-30 MW, according to meeting minutes.

King also told Port commissioners that BPA’s power, which he said was priced at “50% of what it’s worth,” was one major reason Roundhouse was pursuing a data center in the Columbia River Gorge, according to a video recording of the meeting.

The source of this electricity, hydropower, will also help the data center meet industry standards to quality as a “green” data center, according to statements made by King during a March 2023 interview with Columbia Insight.

King did not respond to email and text requests for an interview for this story.

James Longacre, Roundhouse’s chief operating officer and chief engineer, also did not respond to Columbia Insight’s request for an interview.

Mayor vs. King

King has said the data center’s use of electricity would benefit the City of Cascade Locks’ budget.On Feb. 2, the day before Roundhouse and the Port signed a Memorandum of Understanding, King presented a document to the Port that claimed Roundhouse’s direct purchase of electricity from the City of Cascade Locks would increase the city’s power revenues by $1.5 million annually.

Fallon says she has no idea if this number is accurate or not.

“The bottom line is anything that Stephen King says you can’t take it for the truth,” says Fallon. “Some of what he says could be true, but you don’t know because he lacks credibility.”

Looking at numbers: Cascade Locks Mayor Cathy Fallon. Photo: Nathan Gilles

Fallon says King has frequently not answered her questions and has made contradictory statements. Several of these statements she says have to do with the data center’s projected water usage.

As Columbia Insight reported in March, King had originally proposed running the data center using a system that would use “no water,” but later changed the data center’s design to a system that uses “four people’s worth of water” per year, according to statements made by King.

Fallon says King’s past behavior coupled with the data center’s projected power usage makes her wary of the new data center.

“The whole thing is a gamble,” Fallon told Columbia Insight. “I don’t want Cascade Locks holding the bag.”

Fallon has publicly challenged King’s statements about the data center’s power usage.

The two faced off on March 15 when the Port of Cascade Locks and Roundhouse held an open house to discuss the new data center.

The open house was held at the empty Flex 6 building, the proposed site of data center’s first phase.

Flex 6 was built by the Port for a business called The Renewal Workshop, a clothing recycling company. The Renewal Workshop, however, ran into financial problems, leaving Cascade Locks in April 2022 after the company was acquired by a Dutch company.

At the open house, Fallon told the crowd that leasing Flex 6 to a data center involved an even larger risk than having a manufacturing business like the Renewal Project occupy the space.

“The Renewal Project that came in, their power usage wasn’t very much at all,” said Fallon, addressing the crowd, King and members of Roundhouse. “It’s a big difference if a data center comes in and fails, because BPA says our power increases [with the new data center] and once it increases we don’t get to say to the BPA ‘well we’re not using that much power anymore, so we want our old rates.’ It doesn’t work that way.”

King was quick with a rebuttal.

“Your paying rates have nothing to do with our data center,” said King.

“It’s going up. Rates are going up,’” Fallon responded.

“Not due to our usage,” said King. “However, we have said if our particular usage goes up we would cover that. Frankly, I’m not worried because it’s not correct.”

So, who is right?

It depends on how one defines “rates.”

The city’s rates

BPA sells power to the City of Cascade Locks, which operates the local public utility district. The city then sells that electricity to its electricity consumers, including households and businesses.

BPA sells electricity to the city at what is, in effect, a wholesale rate. The city then sells this electricity to its customers at what is, in effect, a retail rate.

Fallon says the “rates” she was referring to are the rates BPA sets for the City of Cascade Locks, not the rates households and businesses pay for their electricity.

The data center’s added electric load means the BPA will charge the City of Cascade Locks a higher rate for its electricity.

The rates that the city charges its customers once it has that electricity might or might not go up due to the data center depending on where the city sets its rates. Fallon says the city is currently taking steps to make sure the rates at which it sells electricity remain affordable.

The City of Cascade Locks, at Fallon’s request, is currently working with an attorney specializing in data centers to ensure that Roundhouse—and not the city’s other electric customers—pay for any cost increases associated with the data center.

“I’ve spoken with other city governments,” says Fallon, “and there are ways that we can structure our rates so that Roundhouse pays for [the cost of] their load and those costs aren’t passed on to the rest of Cascade Locks.”

While Cascade Locks currently charges most households and businesses a flat rate for their electricity, the city is currently developing a special “negotiated rate” for Roundhouse, according to Jordon Bennett, city administrator for the City of Cascade Locks.

“We have never had anything close to this before,” says Bennett. “We have one business [Roundhouse] coming in and essentially asking for double the amount of power the rest of the city uses. They are such a large utility we are looking at doing a negotiated rate.”

BPA rates and load study

By contrast, the rates BPA charges the city are projected to increase.

BPA’s rates are projected to increase starting in October without the data center online, according to the recent City of Cascade Locks memo. But they’re also projected to increase in the years ahead due in part to the data center, according to an electric load study conducted by BPA and obtained by Columbia Insight.

BPA verified the authenticity of the document.

The load study includes several projected future rate scenarios that calculate what the city is likely to pay BPA in the future depending on how much electricity it consumes.

The load study includes three scenarios with the data center’s electric load online and one with it offline.

The offline scenario is called the “Base Case” because it sets a baseline for the other scenarios. The base-case scenario is projected for October 2024.

In the base-case scenario, BPA is expected to charge the City of Cascade Locks $46.58 per megawatt hour (MWh) for its “Total Effective Power Rate,” according to BPA’s load study.

However, with both phases of the data center online, BPA plans to increase the city’s total effective power rate to $57 per MWh, a rate increase of 22.35% above the October 2024 base-case scenario.

Kevin Farleigh, account executive at BPA, confirmed that this increase of 22% is due in part to the data center’s energy usage.

“Yes, they [the data center] would raise the rates at which the city is buying power from us [BPA] by that 22%,” says Farleigh, referring to the load study.

This scenario is projected to start as early as 2025, according to the load study, though Farleigh says 2026 is probably a more accurate date for the rate increase to begin.

Farleigh says any actual rate increase in the future assumes rates stay comparable to what BPA is projecting, adding that these rates could change.

“That forecast could either be too high or too low,” says Farleigh.

“On the hook”

BPA Senior Spokesperson Doug Johnson confirmed the data center’s added electric load will mean BPA will not only charge the City of Cascade Locks a higher rate for its electricity, but also that the city will be required to continue paying BPA at that higher rate even if data center closes.

In practice, this also means the city would be required to cover at least some of costs of the missing electricity consumption should the data center go out of business and stop consuming electricity, according to Johnson.

However, Johnson says, the city wouldn’t have to pay the full amount for data center’s missing load because BPA would sell the unused electricity to other users on the electric grid.

In this scenario, BPA would credit the city for the sold electricity.

Only it’s a little more complicated than that.

Mighty small: About 1,400 people live in Cascade Locks. Photo: City of Cascade Locks

BPA will credit an account regardless of whether it sells the electricity or not. However, BPA is unlikely to credit the full amount owed, according to both Johnson and Farleigh.

Both men confirmed that BPA typically credits unused electricity at a rate that is lower than the rate the original user would have bought the electricity for if the load were still being used. This means should the data center go away, the City of Cascade Locks would most likely owe BPA for some of the data center’s unused electricity.

“Under the current rate structure,” says Johnson, “it [current credit pricing] certainly wouldn’t make them [the City of Cascade Locks] whole [out of debt with BPA], but it would certainly provide a little bit of relief if the [data center’s electric] load evaporated.”

What’s more, Johnson says, if the data center were to go away the city wouldn’t be responsible for these costs indefinitely. That’s because BPA’s contracts are organized in two-year periods.

“If it [the data center and its load] goes away,” says Johnson, “you’re only on the hook for that amount for whatever that proportion of the two years for which the rates are set and then it starts over again.”

The city could also renegotiate its rates with BPA within its two-year contract. Though Johnson says the renegotiation process takes time.

Total costs

Cascade Locks is also projected to have a much larger total electricity bill with the data center online.

The 2024 base-case scenario (in which the data center is not yet online) estimates the city’s “Total Power Charges” will be roughly $1.8 million a year, according to the load study.

With both phases of the data center online in 2025, the city’ total power charges will be roughly $6.6 million a year, according to the load study.

The load study also includes two scenarios in which the data center’s power is phased in during 2024 and 2025. Under these scenarios, BPA plans to sell the city electricity at reduced rates.

However, even with these reduced rates in 2024 and 2025, the city is projected to pay as much as $2.8 and $4.8 million respectively, according to the load study.

Cascade Locks City Administrator Jordon Bennett says these large bills require “responsible” planning on the city’s part.

“Our stance is if it [the data center] happens, great,” says Bennett. “But we as an electrical utility, we are required to sell them power and we are going to do it in a way that makes sure we have enough [electricity] to power the whole city and they’re not taking it all and we’re not left holding the bag.”

Depending on the scenario, says Bennett, the city might or might not have the money in reserve to pay BPA what it owes should the data center go out of business.

“We do have money in reserve, though not in that amount,” says Bennett, referring to projections in BPA’s load study.

If the city were to come up short, Bennett says it would consider raising rates on its other electricity customers to cover the bill.

However, Bennett says regardless of the data center’s projected energy usage, the city will be raising its electric rates to cover the $570,000 in additional costs BPA is expected to charge the city for electricity in the upcoming fiscal year.

And this is what the city is currently exploring doing, according to the recent memo, which was written by Bennett.

The memo reads: “To ensure the City Light department can stay solvent we must look at rate changes.” Asked to explain if this language meant the city was going to raise rates on its customers, Bennett was straightforward.

“Yes, we’re going to have to [raise rates],” says Bennett. “How exactly that math is going to pencil out, I don’t know. But that’s kind of how it works. We have to pass it on [costs].

New substation, “overgrown paperweight”

But there’s another problem associated with the data center’s projected energy consumption: Cascade Locks currently doesn’t have the electric infrastructure to support both phases of the project.

The city currently has the infrastructure to accommodate Roundhouse’s 4 MW usage at Flex 6, but it wouldn’t be able to accommodate the full 11 MW—let alone 25-30 MW—without a new substation.

“There is no way they [Roundhouse] can do what they are calling their phase two without an electrical system update,” says Bennett. “There is no way.”

The city’s current substation, called the Pyramid substation, can accommodate about 14 MW.

With the Flex 6 building’s 4 MW online, the substation will run at roughly 70% capacity, according to Bennett.

Bennett says the city is hoping to add an additional 35 MW by building a new substation.

The new substation plan was proposed in 2017 when the Eagle Creek Fire raised concerns that the city’s electric infrastructure was vulnerable to wildfires, according to Bennett.

The city has since acquired a $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to buy the new substation and purchase the land for the new substation from BPA.

But as part of its deal with BPA, the City of Cascade Locks is required to buy a smaller 6 MW substation in order to buy the land for the larger 35 MW substation. This smaller 6 MW substation won’t be used, according to Bennett.

“It’s essentially an overgrown paperweight at this point. I mean it works, but at 6 megawatts it doesn’t do much,” says Bennett.

Bennett says the deal with BPA isn’t finalized yet.

Possible limits to growth

Brad Lorang, vice president of the Port commission and a former mayor of Cascade Locks, says he sees another potential downside to the data center’s heavy power usage.

Lorang says having one company consuming such a large amount of electricity could limit local economic development by limiting the Port’s ability to attract other businesses, especially if Roundhouse builds its facility out to 25-30 MW.

“I do not want us to get into a situation where some other business would want to come along, and we’re already maxed out on our ability to provide power,” says Lorang.

Columbia crossing: The Bridge of the Gods is owned and operated by the Port of Cascade Locks. Photo: Di Manickam/Unsplash

In February, when the five-member Port of Cascade Locks Commission signed a memorandum of understanding with Roundhouse to approve the data center, Lorang, who has been a vocal critic of the data center, cast the lone dissenting vote.

The MOU was expected to lead to Roundhouse signing a 25-year lease with the Port. The signing of the lease is behind schedule, according to Lorang.

Roundhouse was expected to occupy the Flex 6 building starting in April. That did not happen. Lorang says the company’s move-in date was moved to May 1, but that hasn’t happened either.

Lorang says the Port has had other offers to both lease and buy Flex 6 from the Port, which he says would help lower the Port’s debt burden.

Lying empty, Flex 6 has cost the Port roughly $300,000 in accrued interest on the $6 million loan the Port took out to build the facility, according to Lorang.

But Lorang says he’s concerned that the data center could limit local development in another way as well. Lorang says local economic development is limited due to the town’s small size and the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area that surrounds it.

He says one of his biggest concerns with the proposed deal with Roundhouse is the company’s plans to build out the nearby 10-acre lot, which Lorang says not only ties up that land but would discourage other types of development, such as a resort, which he says would provide a greater positive economic impact for Cascade Locks than a data center.

“It’s beautiful property,” says Lorang. “It’s right on the river. In my mind, a data center is not the best use for that property. And we really have one shot at this, because once you start putting in a large industrial [data center] it will become hard to attract other types of businesses. A resort is not going to want to locate next to a huge warehouse.”

Lorang says he also has his concerns about both King and Roundhouse. While many members of Roundhouse have experience with data centers, King does not.

Lorang says this fact and information revealed by Columbia Insight about King’s past business dealings have made him even more critical of the proposed data center.

King’s past

As Columbia Insight reported in March, King ended up owing over $1 million to former business partners when King failed to complete a previous project for a proposed aquaponics facility in Hood River County. This failed business deal led to legal action being taken against King and a separate investigation by the State of Oregon into potential fraud and violations of securities laws on King’s part.

Columbia Insight has since obtained through a public records request a partially redacted investigation memorandum from the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services Division of Financial Regulation concerning King and the Hood River project.

The memorandum confirms many details in Columbia Insight’s reporting, including how a single investor lost over $880,000 to King when King attempted to purchase land for the aquaponics facility using her money.

The memorandum confirms that a nonrefundable $590,000 was paid to the site’s Hood River County property owners as earnest money to purchase the land.

The investigation tracked the rest of the money through six bank accounts tied to six different companies associated with King. The memorandum concludes the rest of the investor’s money went to business expenses and salaries.

The “most concerning expenses,” according to the memorandum, were “the large salaries” of $180,000 a year [paid to King and other business partners]. The memorandum concluded these large salaries were “not in itself fraud.”

The investigation was dropped. The aquaponics project was never built.

Stating the case: Stephen D. King explaining the proposed data center at a March 10 open house inside the Flex 6 building. Photo: Nathan Gilles

Lorang says he thinks it’s “unlikely” that King will find the financing to complete the data center.

“At this point [the data center is] not moving forward,” says Lorang. “I think his [King’s] history may give people some concerns about loaning him [King] the money.”

However, Lorang says he’s still concerned that the deal might be approved by the Port only to have the project stall or fail.

“The more information that we got, that only further confirmed my fears in his [King’s] ability to pull this off,” says Lorang. “I don’t want somebody to get something half done and then bail out.”

Fallon was even more critical.

“Again, the whole thing is a gamble. And I don’t gamble with other people’s lives and money. I just don’t,” says Fallon.

Whether the deal with Roundhouse goes through or not could come down to the leadership of Port President Jess Groves, who is the subject of an ongoing effort to have him recalled by voters.

Groves was “unavailable” for an interview with Columbia Insight, but agreed to answer questions in writing, according to an email sent by Jeremiah Blue, the Port’s interim general manager.

Groves has not yet replied to our questions.

The post Data center on Columbia River would nearly double town’s energy consumption appeared first on Columbia Insight.

Data center on Columbia River would nearly double town’s energy consumption was first posted on May 9, 2023 at 11:06 am.
©2022 Based in Hood River, Oregon, Columbia Insight’s mission is to publish original, balanced journalism about environmental issues affecting the Pacific Northwest. Columbia Insight is a fully independent, registered nonprofit organization. To support environmental journalism “donate here” to Columbia Insight.

For as long as anyone can remember, the lack of a sanitation system in Lowndes County, Alabama, and resulting reliance on piping human waste directly into septic tanks and local creeks, has made life in the community miserable. After years of organizing and calls to action by the residents of this rural, low-income, and largely Black community, Earthjustice and Alabama grassroots leaders submitted a civil rights complaint, alleging racist neglect by Alabama public health officials. In response, federal authorities launched an investigation. 

The 18-month inquiry found the Alabama Department of Public Health and the Lowndes County Health Department acted with neglect and discrimination toward the county’s residents by not only denying them access to basic sanitation, but imposing fines and even liens against them while ignoring the grave health impacts the situation created.

“Today starts a new chapter for Black residents of Lowndes County, Alabama, who have endured health dangers, indignities, and racial injustice for far too long,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said Thursday in a statement announcing the agreement. “Our work in Lowndes County should send a strong message regarding our firm commitment to advancing environmental justice, promoting accountability, and confronting the array of barriers that deny Black communities and communities of color access to clean air, clean water, and equitable infrastructure across our nation.”

Residents of this county in central Alabama have long lived without basic sanitation services and have watched raw sewage from failing septic tanks flow into their yards. Catherine Coleman Flowers, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice and a 2017 Grist 50 honoree, brought the issue to public attention in her book Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret. It describes shocking scenes of raw sewage on the ground, overflowing toilets, and repeated calls in vain to the city to pump effluent from yards. In a county where almost one in three residents live in poverty, very few could do much about the problem, leaving almost half the county’s homes without access to wastewater infrastructure. A study in 2017 found that rare intestinal parasites persisted in over 30 percent of the Lowndes county residents surveyed, and all of them were Black.

After years of community organizing led by Flowers and others, the federal Justice and Health and Human Services departments launched an investigation in November 2021. They focused on Title IV of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin in federally funded programs and activities. They also considered the Affordable Care Act, which explicitly prohibits the exclusion of any individual from services provided by a public health program. 

The investigation found that not only did the Alabama Department of Public Health fail to provide basic sanitation to the residents of Lowndes County, but the Lowndes County Health Department actively enforced sanitation laws. It often levied charges on residents who had no control over the sanitary conditions in their community and who often could not afford upgrades. 

According to the agreement, the state health department is working alongside federal agencies to correct the situation. The Department of Justice has ordered the agency to immediately stop prosecuting Lowndes County residents for sanitation law violations and take meaningful steps to assess the county’s wastewater needs, develop a plan to address them, and collaborate with the residents to do so. The state health department must provide people with “critical health and safety information” and work with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assess health risks to the population. It must also develop a plan within a year to improve public health in the county. Federal agencies may reopen the investigation if officials feel the agreements are not being followed.

“The work is just getting started,” Flowers said. “We have, over the years, been working to shed light on the problem. Now we’re at the point where we’re working on a solution. I think that [state health officials] will cooperate, because now the nation is watching.”

The federal investigation and resulting agreement mark the first time an environmental justice inquiry has fallen under the Civil Rights Act. Justice Department officials indicated that it would not be the last — something Flowers applauded.

 “There are numerous communities across the United States, especially rural communities, that have these issues,” she said. “So yes, we hope that this will be an example for others to follow. Or people can decide to not wait for the Justice Department to get involved, but to go to work on solutions.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A landmark investigation brings environmental justice to rural Alabama on May 8, 2023.

By Sean Nealon, 541-737-0787, sean.nealon@oregonstate.edu Source: Toby Westberry, 541-737-5274, toby.westberry@oregonstate.edu This news release is available online: https://beav.es/SKb Photos: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjABDee CORVALLIS, Ore. – New research led by an Oregon State University scientist begins to unravel the role dust plays in nourishing global ocean ecosystems while helping regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Researchers have long known that phytoplankton – plantlike organisms that […]

The post Scientists begin to unravel global role of atmospheric dust in nourishing oceans appeared first on Highway 58 Herald.

Accustomed to working in silos, land trusts are realizing fractured efforts to save the environment won’t cut it

Going extinct: Formed by Kwoneesum Dam, the 10-acre Kwoneesum Lake in southwest Washington blocks fish from spawning habitat. Thanks to a collaborative effort, it will be removed next year. Photo: Resources Legacy Fund

By Grant Stringer, May 4, 2023. For almost 60 years, a dam tucked into a creek on private timberland in southwest Washington has cut off miles of habitat for endangered salmon and steelhead.

The dam will be demolished next year and the surrounding ecosystem restored thanks an unlikely alliance of East Coast philanthropists, a timber giant, tribal scientists and a budding network of conservation-minded land trusts.

The removal of Kwoneesum Dam, which stands northeast of Camas, Wash., is part of a major trend in conservation being led in the Columbia River Basin.

Here, Pacific Northwest land trusts are collaborating with new partners to shore up climate resilience throughout the region.

Scientists say areas that can weather the worst of climate change, such as protected watersheds and mature forests, will become critical to biodiversity and human communities.

Local land trusts have banded together and made it their mission to protect—and connect—these areas.

In doing so, they’re attempting something new: aligning climate action on a regional scale.

“There’s something way, way bigger going on with this,” says Dan Bell, land trust director at the nonprofit Friends of the Columbia Gorge, of the recent moves to join forces and consolidate resources in the fight against climate change.

Fractured efforts

In 2019, Columbia Land Trust, based in Vancouver, Wash., bought Kwoneesum Dam and a surrounding 1,300-acre parcel for about $3.24 million from Weyerhaeuser, the Seattle timber company. Co-funders included the Washington state government and the national Land Trust Alliance, based in Wash. D.C.

Columbia Land Trust and the Land Trust Alliance are part of a regional network of trusts calling itself the Pacific Northwest Resilient Landscapes Initiative, which announced its first projects to conserve essential lands in 2020.

Together, they’ve identified and helped protect about two dozen areas in the Northwest, from coastal rainforests to Oregon’s high desert.

Blocking motion: Kwoneesum Dam is a 45-foot-high earthen structure on Wildboy Creek, which flows into the lower Washougal River, a tributary of the Columbia River. Photo: Resources Legacy Fund

These lands provide critical sources of water, diverse ecosystems, connected habitats and fire-resilient forests. In some cases, they’re also managed to allow for some timber production and ranching to support people as well, says Owen Wozniak, a Land Trust Alliance project manager who steers the initiative.

To pick which lands to protect, they’re using a scientific tool developed by the Nature Conservancy that maps resilient lands throughout the United States.

Friends of the Columbia Gorge also used the map when charting about 30 resilient areas in the Columbia River Gorge. The Gorge Commission’s new draft climate plan prioritizes these lands for conservation.

Bell says its another example of collaboration for resilience, which bucks the tendency of nonprofits and Gorge governments to work on separate climate plans, in silos.

“To some degree, that fracturing is very real,” says Bell.

Wozniak says the nature of climate change requires regional cooperation between groups like land trusts. For instance, salmon and other fish migrating through the Columbia River Basin are deeply threatened by a combination of dams in three states, climate-fueled heatwaves and low streamflows.

Land trusts are tackling massive issues like these “by working at a scale that somewhat makes more sense,” he says.

‘Great experiment’ in conservation

The project around Kwoneesum Dam is a case study in conservation for climate resilience, says Cherie Kearney, conservation director at Columbia Land Trust.

The dam has served no purpose since the 1980s, when the first in a line of wood products companies bought it and the surrounding land. Fish have no way to navigate over the dam. Cowlitz Indian Tribe scientists plan to begin removing the dam next year.

The area now functions as a bridge between state-owned lands amid a patchwork of timber farms in southwest Washington’s Cascades foothills.

Peak partner: Cherie Kearney specializes in bringing stakeholders together. Photo: Columbia Land Trust

Kearney and her team will manage the land for sustainability by keeping mature trees from being logged and helping the Cowlitz Indian Tribe protect the riparian ecosystem.

The Pacific Northwest Resilient Landscapes Initiative doled out about $70,000 for the project and helped pay for two others spearheaded by Columbia Land Trust in Washington.

These include almost 5,000 acres along the Klickitat River in the central part of the state now conserved in partnership with the Yakama Nation.

The initiative has helped protect about 20 other resilient areas in the region, including a 32-square-mile corridor in Oregon’s coastal rainforest; a desert expanse in the state’s southwest corner; an island of private land in Idaho’s Caribou-Targhee National Forest at risk of development; and a mosaic of habitats in central Washington.

It’s a “great experiment” in conservation, says Wozniak.

He says the work hinges on a thriving ecosystem of land trusts in the Pacific Northwest that’s probably the strongest of any region in the United States.

Focus on ‘resilient lands’

Wozniak and Bell are both thrilled with the Nature Conservancy’s mapping tool that estimates the resilience of U.S. lands on a granular level.

That map is the backbone of the Gorge Commission’s key, 2035 goal to conserve 70% of “above average” resilient lands in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area spanning Oregon and Washington.

Transactions manager: Owen Wozniak. Photo: Land Trust Alliance

The plans are detailed in the commission’s draft climate plan alongside measures to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

About 63% of these resilient areas are already conserved, according to the draft plan.

The 32 areas include river deltas, the Gorge’s many creeks and peaks from The Dalles to Dog Mountain.

Bell says he’s pleased with the plans.

He also applauds the commission for bringing a wide variety of people and groups to the table in developing the plans, including Friends of the Gorge.

“Collaboration is key,” he says.

Not just key, it appears, but increasingly common. And vital.

Columbia Insight’s reporting on biodiversity in the Columbia River Gorge is supported by the Autzen Foundation and Pacific Power Foundation. 

The post As climate change intensifies, organizations are scaling up by joining forces appeared first on Columbia Insight.

As climate change intensifies, organizations are scaling up by joining forces was first posted on May 4, 2023 at 8:05 am.
©2022 Based in Hood River, Oregon, Columbia Insight’s mission is to publish original, balanced journalism about environmental issues affecting the Pacific Northwest. Columbia Insight is a fully independent, registered nonprofit organization. To support environmental journalism “donate here” to Columbia Insight.