This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a regional collaboration of NPR stations, and Climate Central, a nonadvocacy science and news group. It is republished with permission. 

In northern Nevada, east of Reno, a mountainous desert unfolds like a pop-up book. Wild horses on hillsides stand still as toys. Green-grey sagebrush paints the sandy land, which is baking under the summer sun.

On a 10-acre slice of this desert, people are working to turn this sunshine into paychecks. As society phases out fossil fuels and builds huge new solar energy plants, this region is grabbing a share of that green gold rush by retraining workers for work that is spreading across the West.

At this training center for the Reno branch of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, Francisco Valenzuela uses a wrench to secure brackets to a long steel tube on posts about four feet off the ground. What looks like the start of a giant erector set is the support structure common on large-scale solar farms.

“The brackets, they hold the panels and we set it up,” said Valenzuela.

A few years ago, Valenzuela did electrical work for a solar project not far from here – the 60-megawatt Turquoise Solar Farm. Now, he’s gaining more skills so he can land more jobs. The 43-year-old is originally from Sonora, Mexico, but lives in Reno for trade jobs in northern Nevada. He has two kids in Las Vegas and visits when work is slow.

“You stay busy the whole year working,” he said.

It’s good pay, too, he added, with some companies paying $20 to $30 an hour, or more.

These days, clean energy infrastructure construction is booming and with that, so are solar industry jobs. Nevada has jumped to the forefront in retraining workers for jobs at large-scale solar plants, so much so that now, workers from other states are coming here for guidance.

This year, more than half of all new power generation nationwide will be solar. Developers plan to install roughly 29 gigawatts of solar power – more than double the current record. In Nevada, planned projects this year could increase solar power by almost 1,600 megawatts.

The Solar Energy Industries Association says about 800,000 new workers will be needed in less than a decade. That’s to push the nation’s electricity generation from solar to 30 percent by 2030. Solar accounted for less than 4 percent last year.

“Employers have a need, and they’re hiring, and the pace with which we are hiring and growing is fast,” said Cynthia Finley, who leads workforce strategies for the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, or IREC. The organization says there were more than a quarter million solar workers across the country last year.

But nearly half of the industry’s employers said it was “very difficult” to find qualified applicants.

“The biggest challenge, I think, for everyone is finding those connections to where the jobs are,” Finley said, as well as “finding the training to give you those skills and qualifications to do that job.”

Nevada is taking the lead in developing that workforce for its residents. The state has the nation’s largest solar workforce on a per capita basis and ranks eighth in solar jobs, with more than 7,500 people working. That workforce grew 5 percent last year alone, the energy council says.

Many of those workers are working in the deserts surrounding Las Vegas, says Guy Snow. He trains electricians with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for solar jobs.

“I think we’re ahead of the game as far as being able to build large utility scale plants,” Snow said. “We have some of the largest plants being built around Vegas.”

That includes the $1.2 billion Gemini project. The 690-megawatt solar plant is being built on roughly 7,000 acres, making it the nation’s biggest. Gemini is expected to be completed by the end of the year and generate enough electricity to power 260,000 homes.

“We have 300 electricians out there right now working on that solar plant,” Snow said.“I’m pretty confident we’re going to be able to handle the entire needs of the state of Nevada, for solar and storage.”

Despite the economic and renewable energy benefits, projects like Gemini also can damage the environment.

“We are very much in support of solar as a key to our renewable energy transition,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “What we do have concerns with is the current push toward developing these projects largely in intact desert habitats and undeveloped landscapes.”

Donnelly says developers should build in locations that humans have already disturbed, like abandoned mines or agricultural lands. But, he adds, the biggest threat to biodiversity is climate change – and the main cause is burning fossil fuels.

That means more solar farms, and a growing workforce, at least for now.

Although solar jobs soar when installations are underway, at some point, those jobs will run out. Last year, almost 172,000 solar jobs were with project installation and development firms, and only around 16,000 were in operations and maintenance, according to the latest National Solar Jobs Census.

The electrical workers union is addressing that issue by making sure trainees are qualified, not just for big solar projects, but to work as general electricians on the steady stream of construction jobs around Vegas.

But there have been other hiccups in the growth of solar employment. Supply chain concerns and the specter of new tariffs on solar panels temporarily slowed large-scale installations last year. The Solar Jobs Census reported a decline in utility-scale jobs, even as residential installation jobs increased.

Over the longer term, however, the trend is strongly upward. If projects move ahead as planned in Nevada, solar capacity in the state will double by 2029.

Back in northern Nevada, Paige Den-dekker is also getting trained on solar work. The 57-year-old journeywoman is from Montana and used to be a flagger for mining operations. But she’s seeing more and more solar opportunities, especially in Nevada.

“You make better money. It’s better for the environment,” she said. “And it also creates a lot of jobs for our apprentices and everybody that’s in the laborers’ union.”

The Reno branch of the laborers’ union readies an average of 25 people a month for solar assembly and installation. And sometimes a lot more, says Al DeVita, the center’s director.

“Lately, a lot of people have been coming in for the solar training that we’ve been providing – and it’s a big hit,” DeVita said. “We invested a lot of money in this training because we know there’s a lot of work, and our piece of it is to try and provide a skilled workforce.”

And the union is helping provide more skilled instructors nationwide. This year, laborer trainers from across the country have been coming to the Reno desert to learn the tricks of the trade.

“I would say we’re way ahead of the curve,” DeVita said. “Close to 50 instructors from all around the country are coming in here to see what this site is – lots of people taking pictures, there’s a guy out there with a drone – and they’re trying to figure out how to implement it at their site.”

In the meantime, trainers in the Nevada desert will keep preparing workers to power the green gold rush in the West.

Climate Central’s Joseph Giguere contributed data reporting.

This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Nevada shows states how to build workforce for solar energy boom on Aug 6, 2023.

This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a non-profit news publication investigating how power works in New York state. Sign up for their newsletter here.

It takes about an hour to drive to the Canadian border from the tiny town of Croghan, New York. The area is heavily forested, on the edge of the sprawling Adirondack Park, and in the event of a wildfire, local volunteers bear responsibility for controlling and containing the blaze — even if it’s on state land. So far, they’ve had success.

“We’re lucky up here,” retired firefighter Steve Monnat told New York Focus. “When it gets dry, it doesn’t last very long.”

In his nearly five decades with the Croghan Volunteer Fire Department, Monnat never encountered a wildfire larger than a few acres. Few in New York have. But with the climate, that may change.

As heatwaves intensify and weather patterns swing between periods of heavy precipitation and prolonged drought, New York’s favorable, wildfire-stifling conditions may soon turn. Some argue that the present lack of fire increases the risk of deadly blazes in the future, and that intentional controlled burns are the best preparation. Others find the prospect too destructive, too risky.

“It is very likely that fire frequency and fire regimes are going to change here in the northeast, and that the chances of wildfire are going to increase,” said Andrew Vander Yacht, an ecologist at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. Extensive droughts and rising temperatures may dry forest fuels, he said, increasing the likelihood and severity of wildfires — unless New York burns the fuels first.

The state boasts 18.6 million acres of forested land, much of it publicly owned or constitutionally protected. Though many states perform extensive controlled burns to mitigate the risk of wildfires, New York prohibits the practice in its two largest forested regions. One of them, the Catskill Park, is nearly the size of Rhode Island. The other, the Adirondack Park, is larger than the Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier, and Grand Canyon national parks combined. And unlike in those national parks — or the forested regions now burning in Canada — hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers live in and around state-protected woodlands.

Relatively few are on staff to manage them. New York employs about 130 forest rangers to cover 4.9 million acres of land — over 36,000 acres per ranger. They don’t just care for the state’s forests; their duties include law enforcement and search and rescue. Forest ranger attrition has plagued the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation for years, and some fear these personnel strains could inhibit the agency from carrying out a more involved fire management strategy.

In Croghan, about 50 volunteer firefighters put out the flames in town and on dec land alike. They range from high school students to senior citizens, some of whom maintain their membership solely to participate in the department’s social functions and no longer respond to emergencies. In the event of a major forest fire, they would need to call for additional help from downstate.

Fortunately, the department has not faced a major forest fire in living memory. “Never happened,” said Monnat. “Hopefully it never does.”

Not only does New York have a wetter climate than wildfire-prone regions of Canada and the American West, but the state’s tree species tend to be less susceptible to fire.

“Canada has large remote tracts of spruce, fir boreal forest,” dec spokesperson Jeff Wernick told New York Focus. “New York has some boreal forest in the Adirondacks, but it is segmented. New York has more temperate hardwood forests, which are a lot less susceptible to the types of fire Canada is having, especially after the spring green-up.”

Art Perryman, a longtime ranger who recently returned from fighting forest fires in Nova Scotia, is less sanguine. This summer, unprecedented wildfires in the historically wet Canadian province burned over 58,000 acres of land and displaced over 6,000 people. Perryman said that the similarities between Nova Scotia and the Adirondacks disturbed him.

“They have a very similar climate to us in terms of rainfall,” Perryman told New York Focus. “They’re essentially at the same latitude as us here in the Adirondacks and the fuel type is not all that different.”

Without consensus on whether proactive wildfire prevention measures — like underbrush-clearing burns — are prudent or feasible, the state’s plan is unchanged: Keep suppressing the blazes as they come.

Before Canada’s wildfire smoke started to blow down this summer, forest fires rarely troubled New Yorkers. Wildfires seldom burn more than 3,000 acres in New York per year, passing mostly unnoticed by the state’s population.

That wasn’t always the case. In the early 20th century, upstate wildfires decimated hundreds of thousands of acres every year, poisoned waterways, and blanketed New York City in ash. Rampant logging littered forests with fuel, and the state’s booming railway industry provided ample sparks. In 1903, New York suffered 643 wildfires that together burned over 450,000 acres of land.

Prior to the arrival of European settlers, New York’s indigenous inhabitants used prescribed burns to clear underbrush. According to Les Benedict and Jessica Raspitha of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe Environment Division, which manages the reservation’s 6,800 acres of forested land along the Canadian border, controlled burns aren’t just part of their people’s past. Soon, they may use them again to clear invasive phragmites — a common type of dry, grassy reed — that have spread throughout their tribal forests.

“The reeds grow very close together,” Raspitha told New York Focus. “They push out all the native vegetation that would grow around it.” If left undisturbed, phragmites multiply and accumulate from year to year — providing rich fuel for fires.

Forest managers like Benedict and Raspitha see controlled burns as a useful tool, yet they remain off limits in the Catskills and Adirondacks.

“We are so ignorant when it comes to fire management in New York state,” Ryan Trapani, director of forest services for the nonprofit Catskill Forest Association, told New York Focus. “I wish we were burning more.”

Not all environmentalists agree. For John Sheehan, director of communications for the conservationist nonprofit Adirondack Council, wildfires do not, and will not, pose a significant enough threat to justify controlled burns.

“We had 60 wildfires last year that burned almost a thousand acres in the Adirondacks,” Sheehan told New York Focus. “You double that you’re still not talking even a tiny fraction of the 6 million [acres] we have inside the park.”

Mismanaged, controlled burns can have devastating effects. In 2022, the us Forest Service lost control of a fire it’d set in New Mexico, accidentally destroying over 300,000 acres of land and displacing tens of thousands of people.

Benedict and Raspitha understand the risks and said their division will not perform any controlled burns without proper authorization, training, and preparation. “You need trained experts,” Benedict said.

A single controlled burn requires at least three people to perform. New York may not have the staff. The state’s forest rangers have expressed concerns that they do not have enough personnel to perform their existing duties, let alone any new ones.

“There’s not enough rangers,” said Dave Holden, an environmental activist and longtime resident of the Catskills region. “They’re underfunded for regular operations.”

But if you ask Perryman, the state has the money. He estimates that New York receives about $7,500 each time a ranger deploys out of state to fight wildfires, which he believes should finance a dedicated wildfire protection fund.

“It’s a pittance for New York state,” Perryman said. “But it’s very important … for our program and being ready for these large, destructive wildfires.”

Vander Yacht, who runs suny’s Applied Forest and Fire Ecology Lab, is also in favor of controlled burns. He points to a 2021 study that predicts the frequency of wildfires in New York will more than double by the end of this century.

The Catskills’s oak forests pose the greatest risk of burning in the near future, Vander Yacht said, and a major forest fire in the Adirondacks is less likely. But a blaze in that region could wreak immense destruction due to dense growth and underbrush accumulation — made possible by decades without fires.

Other states, including California, Florida, Vermont, and Pennsylvania, liberally employ prescribed burns to mitigate the risk of wildfires. In New York, they’re far less common, but not unheard of.

Sheehan lives in Albany, and he acknowledges the regular use of controlled burns near his home to mitigate the risk of wildfires in the Albany Pine Barren. But he worries that human intervention in New York’s protected forests could disturb the natural conditions that have long suppressed wildfires.

“Really the only period of time that we had major wildfire problems inside the [Adirondack] park was after a period of long deforestation,” Sheehan said, pointing to the dark history of exploitative logging in the 19th and early 20th centuries. “The forest floor got exposed to sunlight in ways that had never happened before, not because trees fell down or something in a storm, but because they were hauled away.”

In 1885 — spurred by the rapid decimation of the state’s woodlands — the New York state legislature established the Forest Preserve, which grew to include millions of acres in the Catskills and Adirondacks. Nine years later, at the 1894 constitutional convention, the Forest Preserve gained even stronger protections.

Article xiv of the New York state constitution states that the Forest Preserve “shall be forever kept as wild forest lands.” Sheehan believes the “forever wild” clause prohibits controlled burns in the Catskills and Adirondacks. Vander Yacht and Trapani also expressed doubts that the state constitution allows such measures in protected forests. But in a 1930 case, the state’s top court found that the “forever wild” clause exists to protect state forests, and therefore permits “all things necessary” to preserve those forests, including “measures to prevent forest fires.”

Wernick, the dec spokesperson, said state environmental conservation law grants the agency “broad statutory authority” to suppress fires on state lands, and that the dec may determine which fire suppression strategies — including controlled burns — are appropriate and warranted.

The dec does not currently allow prescribed burns in the Catskills and Adirondacks, and it hasn’t shown any inclination to use them in the future.

Some of the agency’s frontline staff are pushing to change that. Leading a group of rangers who helped fight this summer’s Canadian wildfires, Perryman plans on lobbying dec leadership to revamp the agency’s wildfire prevention policies — advocating for the use of prescribed burns, additional training for rangers and firefighters, and an update for the state’s aging inventory of forest firefighting equipment.

Perryman told New York Focus he reached out to dec Commissioner Basil Seggos, but he has yet to receive a direct response.

Even absent major forest fires, volunteering with a rural fire department is “a busy little way of life,” according to Monnat. Holden worries that unless New York revamps its wildfire management policies, the state’s firefighters may find themselves much busier.

Holden acknowledges that many voters and policymakers remain unconvinced that New York needs to do more to mitigate the risk of wildfires in the state’s protected forests. His pitch is short and to the point.

“What would you rather have?” Holden asks. “Us clearing your property, preventing it from burning up? [Or] would you rather have firefighters coming on your property, whether you want them or not, because it’s burning up?”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Will a fear of fires burn New York? on Aug 5, 2023.

Hundreds of wildfires originating in Canada descended over the midwest and eastern U.S. this June. While some regions in the west and in the south of the country are more accustomed to smoke, orange skies and ash are a new sight for others. 

As climate change progresses and global temperatures rise, scientists warn that the size, frequency, and severity of wildfires will only increase. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, the average wildfire season in the western U.S. is already three months longer than it was a few decades ago, and the Canadian government accurately predicted higher-than-normal fire activity this fire season due to long-range forecasts of warm temperatures coupled with the ongoing drought. 

Besides destruction to infrastructure and the natural world, wildfire smoke also poses a major health risk. It contains gaseous pollutants like carbon monoxide, as well as extremely small particles that easily enter lungs and airways. Many of these particles are so small, they can be seen only with an electron microscope. Exposure to pollutants may cause airways to become inflamed, constricted, or otherwise irritated, and cause other physical symptoms like itchy or stinging eyes, a scratchy throat, headaches, runny noses, chest tightness, fatigue, and coughing, or aggravate chronic cardiovascular conditions like heart disease. Some groups are especially at risk, including children, pregnant people, adults over 65, and those with pre-existing lung conditions like asthma and COPD. 

If wildfire smoke begins to impact your community, there are a few things you can do to keep yourself healthy and safe. 

Monitor Air Quality

The severity of polluted air isn’t always visible, so stay informed by checking the Air Quality Index at AirNow.gov, which is run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and provides air quality data by region. The AQI measures the density of five major air pollutants: carbon monoxide, ground-level ozone, nitrogen dioxide, particulates, and sulfur dioxide. During the wildfire season, the measurement called PM 2.5 (which stands for particulate matter) is especially important. This number indicates the concentration of particles in the atmosphere that are smaller than 2.5 micrometers — like those from soot, ash, and dust — which are easy to inhale.

Air quality is determined by the pollutant with the highest concentration at a given moment (which is usually particulates during wildfires), and is given a rating from 0-500: 0-50 (green) indicates little or no risk; 51-100 (yellow) means that air quality is acceptable, but there is some risk for people who are sensitive; 101-150 (orange) indicates that sensitive groups may experience health effects, but the general public is less likely to be impacted; 151-200 (red) is considered unhealthy, and the general public may have health effects; above 201-300 is unhealthy for everyone, especially people with heart and lung disease; and 301-500 is very hazardous for all people. 

Air quality websites and apps can help you track AQI, like IQAir, AirNow, and NOAA’s fire weather outlook.. 

Close Windows and Doors 

Shutting off your home from outside air is one of the most effective ways to keep indoor air quality safe. Close all doors and windows to prevent particulates from entering the house. If windows or doors are drafty or have gaps around the edges, use painter’s tape or tuck towels (preferably damp ones) to create a seal. Consider installing weather stripping around these gaps to protect against future smoke as well. 

Avoid Going Outdoors

Stay inside as much as possible during smokey conditions. Work from home if you can, or drive/take public transportation to work instead of walking to minimize time outdoors. If you must go outdoors, avoid strenuous activities like exercising or mowing the lawn. In general — even apart from wildfire smoke — it’s unsafe to exercise outdoors if the AQI is higher than 150. 

Wear a Mask or Respirator

If you have to go outside, wear a suitable mask or respirator to protect yourself from harmful gases and airborne particles. A scarf or cloth mask — even a surgical mask — won’t offer much protection, so use a close-fitting respirator mask that completely covers your nose and mouth. Respirators differ from other masks in that they are meant to filter out very small airborne particles. N95s and KN95s are respirator masks — which you might already have on hand as a method of COVID protection — and while they’re very effective at protecting wearers from airborne particulates (as much as 95%), they don’t protect much against gases like carbon monoxide that are present in the smoke. If you must go outside (especially if your job requires you to work outdoors for a long period of time), a NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) Approved respirator is the best option for protection.

Use Air Conditioning 

It’s safe to run air conditioners during smoky weather, as long as you take a few precautions. Especially in the summer with all of the windows and doors closed, it can get very hot. If you don’t have air conditioning, seek a community center or household that does. 

For central HVAC systems, change the filter as often as recommended by the manufacturer, and close the fresh/outdoor air intake (which might allow smoke to get into your house). Some of these systems allow for high-efficiency air filters. If so, install one that’s classified as MERV 13 or higher. Most window air conditioners have an outdoor air damper near the top, which prevents rain or snow from entering. Close this before running to block any outside air from being sucked in. Portable air conditioners with hoses work slightly differently and might pull in smoke, so check the details for your specific model before turning it on. 

Use Air Purifiers 

Keep indoor air clean with a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) purifier. Air purifiers can reduce particles indoors by as much as 85%, according to the EPA. They can, however, be very expensive, ranging in price from $50 to $1,000 for a single unit. 

If you only purchase one machine, choose one room as a “clean room” to set it up in, paying attention to the space requirements listed on the product. Consumer Reports recommends getting a purifier that’s marketed for larger spaces of at least 350 square feet, claiming they operate better. Close all windows and doors — including those that lead to other rooms — and sleep there if possible. 

Ideally, get an air purifier in advance to have on hand for smoky weather, as stores might sell out as air quality worsens. Consumer Reports and Wirecutter have recommendations for the best models, and guidelines for indoor air filtration are available on AirNow. 

Keep the Indoors Clean, and Avoid Smoke- or Particle-Producing Activities 

Maintain high air quality inside even without an air purifier by avoiding certain activities. Refrain from using aerosol sprays and candles, or gas, propane, and wood-burning stoves. Avoid cooking if you can, as frying and broiling foods can create smoke or particles that get trapped indoors. 

When you go outdoors into polluted air, particles can quickly settle on your body and clothing. Change clothes and shower when you come in from outside to avoid spreading the particles around your home. Vacuuming can disturb pollutants and release them into the air, so it’s better to wipe surfaces and floors with damp cloth.

Drink Water

Staying well hydrated is important for kidney and liver function, which help remove toxins from the body and reduce inflammation. Drinking water also reduces some physical symptoms from smoke exposure, like coughing and scratchy throats.

The post How to Protect Yourself From Wildfire Smoke appeared first on EcoWatch.

Quick Key Facts

• Algae aren’t an animal, plant or fungi. They’re considered members of the protist kingdom, a group of tiny, typically single-cell organisms.
• All algae are broken into one of a handful of categories based on color.
• Nutrient pollution, high water temperatures, extreme weather events, slow water currents and low wind speeds can all drive harmful algae blooms to grow out of control.
• Nutrient pollution occurs when too much of certain nutrients, like phosphorus, enters into a waterway.
• Humans can be at risk from harmful algae blooms when swimming in infested waters or when consuming fish, shellfish or water from those sources.
• Human health impacts from harmful algae blooms can range from vomiting, diarrhea or stomach pain to more severe conditions like paralytic shellfish poisoning or liver failure.
• Algae blooms can be ecologically beneficial, but only when the type of algae isn’t one that produces toxins or depletes oxygen in the water.
• Harmful algae blooms have been identified in freshwater in every U.S. state, plus Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, while every coastal state has identified harmful algae blooms in saltwater or brackish water.
• There’s plenty you can do at home to help reduce nutrient pollution and harmful algae blooms, such as changing your laundry habits, picking up pet waste and volunteering in harmful algae bloom monitoring efforts.

What Are Harmful Algae Blooms?

Algae are one species within the protist kingdom of living beings, which is mostly composed of single-celled, microscopic organisms that may share traits with animals, fungi and/or plants. The biological grouping also includes kelp and molds. There are two main groups of algae — seaweeds, or macroalgaes, and phytoplankton, or microalgaes — in addition to several different categories of algae based on color: green algae, red algae, brown algae and blue-green algae.

Algae are typically found in water, which is why you’ve probably seen a colony of algae accumulate at different bodies of water, like lakes and rivers. They contain chlorophyll — a compound also found in plants — which allows them to turn sunlight into food. A group of algae is called a bloom. But under certain circumstances, an algae bloom can rapidly grow and become an ecological and health hazard. Once a bloom is toxic, it’s known as a harmful algae bloom.

How Are Harmful Algae Blooms Created?

A variety of factors can lead to the creation of a harmful algae bloom. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), nutrient pollution, high water temperatures, extreme weather events, slow water currents and low wind speeds can all lead to algae blooms to grow out of control. However, the agency notes, “how these factors come together to create a ‘bloom’ of algae is not well understood.”

These factors can lead to algae blooms, but not all blooms are harmful. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are three main algaes that can become harmful: cyanobacteria (called blue-green algae), dinoflagellates and diatoms (both of which are known as microalgae or red tide).

“The most frequent and severe blooms typically are caused by cyanobacteria, the only known freshwater algae with the potential for production of toxins potent enough to harm human health,” explains the U.S. Geological Survey on its website.

What Is Nutrient Pollution?

Nutrient pollution occurs when too much of certain nutrients — mainly carbon, nitrogen or phosphorus, according to NOAA — enter into a waterway. Those substances can accumulate as the result of natural processes, but the main causes of nutrient pollution involve human activities, such as animal manure and pet waste; sewage treatment plant discharge and poorly maintained septic tanks; power plants; detergents; fertilizer; cars; and power plants, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

While all organisms need nutrients to survive, too much of these substances can cause algaes to grow out of control. And where there’s overly ample algae, there’s going to be problems. Bacteria feeding on dead, decaying algae also limits the amount of dissolved oxygen in a waterway, which can kill fish.

What Is Red Tide?

One type of harmful algae bloom is known as red tide, an event that happens when one of several different phytoplankton proliferate and produce toxins fatal to marine life and harmful to humans. Found worldwide, red tide is not necessarily red but instead can be a “rusty orange to green to bioluminescent” in color, according to National Geographic. In the Gulf of Mexico, the toxic algal culprit beyond red tide is Karenia brevis. This year, red tide was identified in Florida earlier and stronger than ever.

Human and Animal Health Impacts of Algae Blooms

Human health can be harmed by algae blooms when we swim in waters infested with harmful algae blooms [also known as HABs] or eat fish, shellfish or other seafood from those sources. We can also get sick from drinking or cooking with water from those sources, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

“As with many environmental exposures, children and the elderly may be especially sensitive to HAB toxins,” the agency explains. “Populations that rely heavily on seafood are also at risk of long-term health effects from potentially frequent, low-level exposures to HAB toxins.”

Potential health consequences from these activities can range from nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches or stomach pain to paralytic shellfish poisoning, acute liver failure or seizures. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences provides a lengthier list of potential side effects on their website.

The human health side effects are scary enough, but the CDC warns on its website that “animals can get very sick or even die within minutes to days after exposure to harmful algae and cyanobacteria.” To that end, you should “seek veterinary care immediately if your pets or livestock seem sick after going in or near water.”

In 2019, 242 harmful algal blooms were reported to the CDC by 14 different states, with dozens of human illnesses and hundreds of animal illnesses recorded. Humans should call their local poison control center if symptoms occur consistent with harmful algae bloom exposure after engaging in the aforementioned activities.

How Do Algae Blooms Hurt the Economy?

Because of the health impacts of interacting with waterways that have harmful algal blooms, the surrounding areas may also become less attractive to visit, work or live in. If a tourist wants to get in the water, they might logically avoid an area where the chance of not being allowed to swim is high in the summertime. That lack of easy tourism might make it less attractive to buy property or to start a business there, too.

“A preliminary and highly conservative nationwide estimate of the average annual costs of HABs is approximately $50 million,” writes the U.S. National Office for Harmful Algal Blooms at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on its webpage. Public health accounts for almost $20 million of the overall annual nationwide cost, but impacts on commercial fisheries ($18 million), recreation and tourism ($7 million) and monitoring and management ($2 million) are still notable.

However, the office adds that “the actual dollar amount of these estimates is highly uncertain due to a lack of information about the overall effect of many [harmful algae bloom] events and a difficulty in assigning a dollar cost to those events that we do understand.”

“While many expenses may be difficult to quantify, there is little doubt that the economic effects of specific HAB events can be serious at local and regional levels,” the office continues.

Are Algae Blooms Ever Beneficial?

Most species of algae don’t create toxins or deplete oxygen in waterways. So according to the EPA, algae blooms can be beneficial in that blooms can serve as useful environmental indicators of nutrient shifts, in addition to supporting the marine food chain, since “all other life in the ocean relies on phytoplankton.”

However, it’s still wise to be cautious around a bloom. That’s because, as the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences points out on their webpage, you can’t always “tell if a water body has a harmful bloom just by looking at it.”

Where Are Algae Blooms Impacting Ecosystems?

Cyanobacterial algae blooms have been identified in freshwater within every U.S. state, plus Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the CDC. Harmful algae blooms caused by dinoflagellates or diatoms, more common in saltwater or brackish water, have been identified in all coastal U.S. states.

Already this summer, officials as widespread as New Jersey,  Rhode Island, Michigan, Vermont and California have warned of harmful algal blooms threatening waterways.

Lake Okeechobee, Florida

One particularly strong example of the impact of harmful algae blooms expanding uncontrollably is in Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Satellite imagery from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) shows that algae covered more than half of Florida’s largest freshwater lake for the better part of June and July 2023. That has led to public health warnings about swimming or recreating on the lake, as tested samples showed the presence of a toxin created by cyanobacteria.

According to Inside Climate News, widespread draining of the Everglades to “make way for farmland and towns ultimately led to runoff from agricultural operations, septic and sewer systems and fertilized urban landscapes.” Those activities create the conditions under which harmful algae blooms thrive. 

With this lake in particular, water management officials rely on strategic water releases to protect a dike when heavy rains lead to too-high lake levels. But those releases send harmful algae bloom-polluted waters — and the associated ecological and health impacts — straight to residents of surrounding communities. This summer, officials are trying to hold back on releasing water until a safer time algae-wise, but The New York Times reports that “by late June the lake’s level was roughly two feet higher than the United States Army Corps of Engineers would like.”

Can We Predict When Harmful Algae Blooms Will Occur?

The short answer? Kind of. There are numerous official, academic and volunteer monitoring and prediction efforts across the country. 

NOAA likens algal bloom prediction at their Harmful Algal Bloom Operational Forecast System in the Gulf of Mexico to hurricane forecasting, in that they can forecast the path of a bloom, how big it will be and whether it could worsen and use that information to alert the public to problematic waterways.

However, some agencies report having a tough time with accurate forecasting of harmful algae blooms. 

“Predicting when these blooms will occur is one of the greatest challenges we face… Currently, we can’t even predict the correct month,” acknowledges the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, which is testing whether light-measuring sensors can help identify certain cyanobacterias.

How Can I Reduce The Impact of Harmful Algae Blooms?

There are several ways to help mitigate the harm caused by overly abundant algae blooms. 

You can avoid certain sources of nutrient pollution, like detergents, soaps and cleaners that contain phosphate. The EPA recommends you “only run your clothes or dish washer when you have a full load” and to “select the proper load size for your washing machine” to reduce the amount of cleaning products and water used.

You might not think that energy efficiency would tie in with reducing algae blooms, but certain types of power plants are a source of nutrient pollution. To that end, reducing the overall amount of electricity needed helps reduce the number of power plants needed, thus reducing emissions that can spur more algae growth.

Another thing the agency suggests you do that everyone will be grateful for: cleaning up after your pets when they defecate outside, as well as guiding them toward grassy areas where their feces won’t run off into a waterway.

The EPA makes additional recommendations around car washing, driving personal vehicles and maintaining septic tanks and other algae bloom mitigation efforts you can do at home on this webpage. They also make suggestions for yard and garden maintenance —  such as only using the amount of fertilizer you actually need and not applying it on windy or rainy days — on this webpage.
The agency also suggests joining volunteer monitoring efforts to help pinpoint sources of nutrient pollution and restore polluted ecosystems.

The post Algae Blooms: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on EcoWatch.

This story is part of the Grist arts and culture series Remember When, a weeklong exploration of what happened to the climate solutions that once clogged our social feeds. This story was co-published with Popular Science.

It was the face that launched a thousand plastic straw bans. 

The video begins with a close up of the turtle’s head, its dark green, pebbled skin out of place against the stark-white boat deck. Robinson’s hands approach, moving the pliers toward the turtle’s nostril. The tool clamps down on the edge of something — A barnacle? A worm? — barely visible within the dark tunnel. The creature squirms and dribbles blood as the pulling begins. A long, thin object begins to emerge, inch by excruciating inch.

It was August 10, 2015, and marine conservation biologist Christine Figgener was collecting data for her Ph.D. a few miles off the coast of Guanacaste, Costa Rica. She and a colleague, Nathan Robinson, were researching olive ridley sea turtles when they noticed a male had something encrusted in its nose. The pair decided to try to extract the object. Robinson flipped open his Swiss army knife’s pliers and Figgener grabbed her phone and began to film. 

“We had no idea what we were frigging looking at,” Figgener said in a newer, annotated version of the video. It wasn’t until one of the researchers cut off a piece of the object that they realized what it was: a four-inch piece of plastic straw.

“We couldn’t believe that such a mundane object that we really use on a daily basis … that we found it in the turtle’s nose,” she said — “that a tiny object caused so much suffering.”

When Figgener uploaded the turtle straw video to her YouTube account eight years ago, it went viral. For a few years, plastic straws were the trendy rallying cry for sustainability. In many ways, the campaign was a success story — one that elevated our awareness of single-use plastics to the point where it resulted in actual policy change. But upon reflection, not all the solutions that spun out of the anti-straw movement actually held water. In recent years, many environmental pundits have focused on the movement’s shortcomings. 

To many environmentalists fighting plastic pollution, anti-straw advocacy now feels passé — out of touch with the broader need to address all forms of single-use plastic. But the movement’s rise and fall still holds lessons for the activists of today.

From soda bottles to yogurt containers, there is a lot of plastic pollution out there. So how did we end up so obsessed with straws?

The anti-plastic straw movement didn’t actually originate with Figgener’s turtle video. Back in 2011, a 9-year-old named Milo Cress found it odd that the restaurants he would go to with his mom in Burlington, Vermont, would automatically serve drinks with a straw, whether or not their customer wanted one. He approached the owner of Leunig’s Bistro and Café in Burlington, and eventually, Leunig’s became one of the first establishments in the country to ask customers whether they wanted a straw or not.

Eventually, Cress and his mom made some calls to straw manufacturers and estimated that 500 million straws are used and discarded by people in the U.S. every day. The environmental advocacy group Eco-Cycle published Cress’s findings, which in the years since have been cited by nearly every major news media outlet that has covered the plastic straw beat, including CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. (The credibility of that figure has since been questioned, with market research firms determining the figure to be between 170 million and 390 million a day.)

But the turtle video added just the right amount of injury to plastic insult. Figgener’s viral footage helped stir single-use plastic outrage into a frenzy. Celebrities called on their followers to #stopsucking, a social media campaign that aimed to “turn the plastic straw into environment enemy number one.” 

Thousands of restaurants joined the pledge and the idea took off, reaching the rare environmental threshold of actual policy change. In 2018, Seattle became the first big city in the United States to ban plastic straws. It was followed shortly by other major municipalities in California, New Jersey, Florida, and other states. That same year, companies including Starbucks and American Airlines jumped on the anti-straw bandwagon, the former announcing it would launch a new “sippy” lid for its cold beverages starting in 2020, allegedly diverting more than 1 billion straws per year.

But for all its success in getting people riled up about plastic pollution, much of that outrage seemed limited to, well, straws, which only make up a small part of the single-use problem. National Geographic calculated that of the 8 million tons of plastic deposited into the world’s oceans each year, only 0.025 percent is comprised of plastic straws. 

Some anti-plastic advocates began denouncing the straw bans as “slacktivism,” a type of activism characterized by a lack of commitment or effort. They said the bans gave people an overblown sense that they were making a difference in combating the plastics crisis. For example, anti-straw pledges didn’t seem as concerned with other types of plastic waste or the fossil fuels associated with every part of their life cycle. Even the anti-straw Starbucks sippy lids were actually made from polypropylene, a type of plastic that has a 3 percent recycling rate in the U.S. (The company claimed it was still an improvement, as the new lids could potentially be recycled. Plastic straws are too lightweight and thin to make it through the mechanical recycling sorting process.)

The anti-plastic straw movement also started getting pushback from disability advocates, who pointed out that some people need flexible straws to be able to drink liquids. Paper straws get soggy and fall apart more quickly, reusable straws made of metal are not easy to bend, and silicone straws are difficult to clean.

For the average consumer, functionality is often more important than sustainability, said Leslie Davenport, a climate psychology educator and consultant. “Our brains favor habits because they conserve energy. So if we are going against the current — a BYO straw for example — it’s hard for most people to do so unless highly motivated.”

For restaurants that chose to continue to provide disposable straws, there were options beyond paper or plastic. Straws made with natural materials such as sugarcane and wheat are 100 percent biodegradable, but are inflexible and cost more to manufacture. As a result, many businesses looked to straws made from bioplastics — allegedly compostable plastics made from corn, sugarcane, agave, and other nonpetroleum sources. But according to Brandon Leeds, co-founder of SOFi Paper Products, bioplastics require specific disposal and processing methods, many of which aren’t always followed or clearly outlined, in order for them to decompose effectively. 

“Many businesses desire to adopt sustainable practices, and when they encounter these plastic-like alternatives, they may mistakenly believe that they can be environmentally conscious without truly moving away from the plastic aesthetic,” Leeds said. “The absence of stricter governmental regulations allows companies to take advantage of greenwashing tactics, making it difficult to differentiate genuinely sustainable options from those that are not.”

Buying into greenwashing, a term that refers to environmental “solutions” whose appeal is based on appearing environmentally friendly rather than actually being so, “can be an unconscious psychological defense in individuals to shield them from the fear and overwhelming [feeling] of climate change,” Davenport said. “There can be an unexamined story of ‘I’m doing my part’ because it is more soothing than feeling out of control with the harmful and terrifying trajectory we are on with climate change.”

Plastic straw bans are alive and well today, with new proposals still cropping up at the state and city levels. But eliminating plastic straws is no longer the go-to goal of the anti-plastic movement. Part of that is the result of the existing bans’ success: For many consumers, the absence of plastic straws has become normal, even mundane. Now, anti-plastic advocates hope to harness in new ways the outrage they once inspired. 

According to Jackie Nuñez, the Plastic Pollution Coalition’s advocacy and engagement manager and the founder of The Last Plastic Straw, the anti-plastic straw movement helped advance awareness and understanding of other single-use products. California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon, and Vermont have all placed some form of ban on plastic bags. The U.S. Interior Department stated that single-use plastic products will be phased out of national parks and around 480 million acres of federal land by 2032. In 2022, the Canadian federal government implemented a single-use plastics ban that included bags, cutlery, food service ware, and stir sticks.

It’s not really the item, it’s the material that’s the problem, Nuñez said. “All plastic is pollution by design.”

Some activists have attempted to call attention to the scourge of single-use plastics by staging ‘plastic attacks,’ in which protesters head to the grocery store and proceed to remove the plastic wrapping from the food in their carts and return the waste to the store.

Since they began in 2018, the strategy has gone global. Plastic attacks have been reported in places including in Hong Kong, South Korea, Canada, Peru, and the United States. Some of the biggest demonstrations have drawn hundreds of participants.

The anti-plastic straw movement “triggered a lightbulb moment for a lot of people,” Nuñez said. “It ended up becoming a thing I call a gateway issue.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Did plastic straw bans work? Yes, but not in the way you’d think. on Aug 4, 2023.