On Wednesday, 95,000 gallons of sewage spilled into the coastal waters of Laguna Beach in Southern California, prompting the closure of over two miles of the coastline.
The closure spans from Laguna Avenue to Blue Lagoon, according to the announcement from the Orange County Health Care Agency. The area will be closed until further notice.
“The spill volume is an estimated total of 94,500 gallons, and was caused by a break in a force main sewer line in Laguna Beach,” the agency said, as reported by KTLA. The exact location of the break has not been announced.
The affected area will remain closed for swimming, surfing and other recreational activities that involve water contact. Ongoing monitoring of water quality will determine when the water meets “acceptable standards,” and can be considered for reopening, the agency said, as reported by The Associated Press.
The Orange County Health Care Agency will offer updated information on its website, www.OCBeachInfo.com, or by phone at 714-433-6400. The agency has also asked that any sewage spills be reported by calling 714-433-6419.
Sewage spills put human health at risk, as they allow bacteria to contaminate the water. This bacteria can lead to various health impacts for those who come in contact with it.
“Gastroenteritis is the most common illness associated with swimming in water polluted by sewage. It occurs in a variety of forms that can have one or more of the following symptoms: nausea, vomiting, stomach ache, diarrhea, headache and fever,” a California government website noted. “Other minor illnesses that can result from swimming in polluted water include ear, eye, skin, nose and throat infections. In highly polluted water, swimmers may occasionally be exposed to more serious diseases like dysentery, hepatitis, cholera and typhoid fever.”
Aside from the negative health impacts for humans, sewage spills pose great risks to the environment. Sewage spills can increase risk of algal blooms, which can block sunlight and oxygen for aquatic life, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
According to Surfrider Foundation, around 900 billion gallons of under-treated sewage spill into surface waters around the world per year. The organization explained that spills can often be attributed to aging and poorly maintained infrastructure that cannot keep up with the wastewater needs of rapidly growing populations.
“Climate change will make this situation worse as more frequent and more severe coastal storms will occur, dumping high volumes of rain, causing flooding and sewers to overflow,” Surfrider Foundation shared. “Sea level rise in some coastal cities like Miami is also already causing sunny day flooding and problems within the stormwater and wastewater systems.”
We’ve all seen cigarette butts on the sidewalk, on the beach or lying in the grass, but may not have realized the toll those cotton-like plastic fibers take on the environment.
The cost of marine ecosystem damage and waste management related to the plastics in cigarette packaging and butts is approximately $26 billion per year, or $186 billion each decade, according to a new analysis conducted by Deborah K. Sy, a global health lawyer who is the head of global public policy and strategy at the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control, a press release from the British Medical Journal (BMJ) said.
Sy emphasized that, while the costs of cigarette waste may seem minute in proportion to the overall human and economic toll of tobacco, the impacts, which are cumulative, can be avoided.
“Although this amount is small compared with the annual economic losses from tobacco (US$1.4 trillion per year) and may appear insignificant compared with the 8 million deaths attributable to tobacco each year, these environmental costs should not be downplayed as these are accumulating and are preventable,” Sy said in the press release.
Sy pointed out that, while progress has been made to develop policies banning or reducing single use plastics globally, plastics in cigarettes have been left out.
It’s a big oversight, however, as cigarette filters — which consist of single-use plastic — are the most prevalent waste item collected in the world.
The analysis, “Tobacco industry accountability for marine pollution: country and global estimates,” was published in the journal Tobacco Control.
“Efforts to reduce plastic pollution should address cigarette filters as toxic, widespread and preventable sources of marine pollution. Countries may develop specific estimates of waste management and ecosystem costs in order to assign tobacco industry accountability for this pollution,” Sy wrote in the study.
Sy used publicly sourced data for cigarette sales, marine and terrestrial plastic waste from cigarettes and clean-up costs in an attempt to measure the economic toll of the toxic waste of cigarette products worldwide in order to better inform environmental protection agencies and tobacco control, BMJ said.
Data sources for the study included the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank, the World Wildlife Fund and The Tobacco Atlas.
“Cigarette filters have been polluting our oceans and land for at least five decades, and these trash items may have a carrier effect with the toxic chemicals leached from them. Human and ecosystem impacts of this toxic chemical accumulation are unknown,” Sy wrote.
The weight of each plastic cigarette filter, along with the weight of the package, was included in Sy’s calculations.
Sy estimated the yearly and decade-long predictions of the economic costs to the environment of cigarettes based on tonnage. Projections for an entire decade were used because cigarette butts reportedly take a decade to break down.
The total reflects estimates of the expense of cleaning up and disposing of the overall amount of plastic generated by sales of filtered cigarettes that end up in landfills, the ocean or out in the environment.
The total annual cost estimate of $26 billion from cigarette plastics waste consists of $5 billion for waste management and $20.7 billion in damage to marine ecosystems, or $186 billion per decade.
The greatest number of cigarette butts that end up as waste are found primarily in low and middle income countries, and the estimates suggest that the cigarette plastics pollution-related costs are likely highest in Indonesia, China, Japan, the Philippines and Bangladesh.
Sy said that, though the figures are estimates, they are most likely conservative due to the fact that chemicals and toxic metals found in cigarette butts were not taken into account and accumulate over time, which makes them more toxic than most plastic waste.
“The general estimates provided here could provide fiscal evidence of the need to mitigate tobacco plastic waste pollution,” Sy suggested, and the data could aid “in assigning industry responsibility for these losses, including that of the [tobacco industry],” according to BMJ.
Sy added that policies to put the responsibility for cleaning up tobacco waste on the tobacco industry are being considered by the European Union, France, the United Kingdom and the United States.
People in Alaska’s rugged Interior have long known the hills surrounding the Native Village of Tetlin hid gold. As tribal member Kevin Gunter grew up, his elders told him such riches should be left alone. Nothing good would come of digging them up, they warned. Now, Gunter fears what might happen as an open-pit mine comes to his tribe’s land.
Kinross, the majority owner and operator of the project, plans to haul the ore roughly 250 miles on public roads to a mill at another mine, called Fort Knox, outside Fairbanks. To learn more about the company’s plans for the new mine, named Manh Choh, Gunter took a job as a senior electrician at Fort Knox about a year ago. He soon grew frustrated by the culture. “Nobody’s doing any quality control,” he said. “They won’t plan a job. And they won’t work the plan.”
Grist
That didn’t inspire confidence in Kinross sending 80-ton trucks rumbling down the primary highway linking Fairbanks to Canada and the Lower 48. So Gunter started digging into how and why his tribe approved the company’s lease for the land. He and other tribal officials found what they allege is a series of questionable background deals, corruption, and self-serving arrangements by the former chief and current tribal leaders.
In a written statement to Grist, Kinross insists that the company has acted in good faith and within the rights provided by its lease, while investing in things like a road to the community. But the Tetlin Native Corporation, a for-profit business owned by tribal shareholders, claims it is the rightful owner of some of the land — and that it was not party to the negotiations and did not approve the lease. It alleges that the mineral lease broke tribal laws. The corporation hopes to establish its claim to the land. This may call the lease with the tribal council into question, potentially delaying, or even stopping, the project.
The corporation’s allegations are one of two looming legal actions that could scuttle Kinross’ plans. In late October, a group of citizens called Committee for Safe Communities filed a lawsuit claiming the project violates state transportation regulations. It has asked the state to pause the truck haul pending an independent review of public safety concerns Grist previously reported.
Gunter grappled with his decision to speak out. As a single father, he worried about the repercussions for his family. The project has been contentious, as some locals cheer the jobs it promises, while others worry about the safety and environmental impacts. But one night while making his daughter dinner, he decided he had to take action. “I just thought, what kind of a s****y father would I be if I just let this happen to her,” he said.
Kevin Gunter poses for a photo at work. Courtesy of Kevin Gunter
Kevin Gunter’s daughter as a baby. Courtesy of Kevin Gunter
He felt a duty to his tribe to reveal what he’d found. “When you tell the truth, it becomes a part of your past,” he added. “But if you lie, that becomes part of your future. And we’re gonna be seeing everybody’s future here real soon.”
Until 1968, vast, unbroken tundra stretched across the northern reaches of Alaska, windblown hummocks resting beneath sweeps of curving sky. Then British Petroleum — the company now known as BP — struck oil in Prudhoe Bay. That lucrative discovery created a huge problem: Building an 800-mile pipeline to a shipping terminal on the other side of the state required figuring out who owned the land it would traverse.
Much of it belonged to Native communities who didn’t rely on written documents like deeds and titles. As oil companies pushed the state, established just nine years earlier, to quickly settle the issue and get the pipeline started, activists like Iñupiaq politician Eben Hopson pointed out how long it would take to litigate claims with hundreds of villages. “This is our land,” Hopson declared in a public hearing in 1969, as the fight unfolded. “If you want it, pay fair value for it.”
This 1968 aerial view shows Prudhoe Bay, on the Arctic slope 390 miles north of Alaska.
AP Photo
That tension led to the federal Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. The law attempted to secure better treatment for the Indigenous peoples of Alaska than those in the Lower 48 had received. The federal government transferred 44 million acres — almost 10 percent of the state — to for-profit Alaska Native companies that serve tribal shareholders. These business ventures aimed to facilitate the economic development of Native communities and provide greater control over their natural resources.
The Tetlin Native Corporation received 743,147 acres. Unlike many other village corporations, it retained the rights to subsurface resources like minerals. While the corporation is responsible for the tribe’s business investments, the tribe’s chief and council govern Tetlin, overseeing things like the tribal court and social services. Ideally, the two entities work together on the community’s behalf, but things grew complicated when their leadership overlapped.
Donald Adams, whom everyone called Danny, was named Tetlin’s chief in 1989. He was also the president of the tribal corporation. Adams sported a wispy goatee, a love of cards, and a passion for sharing Tetlin’s culture. He was known to hunt ducks in the spring and live off the land. “You have to have that link to where you came from, and what your culture means to you,” he once told a filmmaker.
In 1994, Chief Adams led the council in applying for a casino license. The National Indian Gaming Commission denied the application because the corporation, not the council, owned the land. The following year, Adams’ attorney suggested transferring the tribe’s land to solve that problem. A majority of the corporation’s roughly 125 shareholders was required by state law to approve this move, but they never did so.
Nevertheless, in 1996, Adams transferred 643,147 acres to the council, leaving the corporation with 100,000 acres that was under litigation after a wildfire. The move rendered the corporation insolvent, leading dissenting shareholders to sue for “breach of fiduciary duties.” In 2006, the state Supreme Court ruled that Adams abused his authority in the “wrongful transfer.” The corporation removed Adams, but the tribal council allowed him to remain chief.
Before a new deed could be drawn up restoring the corporation’s ownership of the land, Adams met Brad Juneau, a clean-cut businessman fond of purple ties who owned a prospecting company in Texas. In June 2008, Adams brought Juneau to a tribal council meeting, where Juneau proposed exploring for minerals, gas, and oil. Roy David, a council member at the time, and others expressed wariness at the idea and requested more information. He believed Juneau should answer the council’s questions before any further action was taken.
But the following month, Adams unilaterally signed a mineral lease for 780,000acres — more land than Congress ever allocated to the corporation — during a closed-door meeting with Juneau’s exploration company. Adams “manipulated and controlled all transactions outside of the council’s knowledge,” David later said in notarized testimony.
Although tribal law requires a council majority to approve all contracts, David and at least one other council member said they never knew about the lease. He began hearing rumors about something happening with a mining company, and was disturbed when Adams refused to provide details. Frustrated by the stonewalling, he resigned from the tribal council.
Juneau went on to form a joint mining venture with several companies, eventually including Kinross, the Toronto-based mining business that now manages the operation. The details of the contract remained a closely guarded secret until 2015, when it was filed with the state Department of Natural Resources. When he finally saw it, David said, “the mineral lease from the first page on had false information.”
In the midst of all this turmoil, Roy David walked into the Wings of Healing Church in Fairbanks. The pastor, David Flenaugh, often turned to Scripture when his congregation was facing trouble. “Hell and destruction are never full; So the eyes of man are never satisfied,” he said, quoting Proverbs 27. But if greed isn’t serving you, he said, “we need to do something different.”
Flenaugh’s sermon resonated with Roy David, who invited the minister to Tetlin. Flenaugh, who runs a construction company, was struck by the lack of playgrounds there and offered to build some. Over time, he grew more involved with the community, eventually becoming the corporation’s general manager in 2011, paying its bills out of his own pocket. As he dug into the corporation’s finances to help it return to solvency, he discovered it couldn’t borrow money or use its land for collateral because the title remained clouded by Adams’ transfer. “It became our goal to clean that up,” Flenaugh said. He hired researcher Loretta Smith to help.
It turned out the mining deal Adams brokered had included an initial payment of $50,000 to Tetlin for negotiating expenses. The SEC filings don’t show who received that money, and the contract expressly stated “Tetlin shall not be responsible to [Brad] Juneau to account for the expense payment.” The mining venture named one of the project’s most promising areas the “Chief Danny Prospect.” Chief Adams also approved a finder’s fee to Rickey William Hendry, another Texan who brought Juneau to Tetlin in the first place: As a “friend of the tribe,” Hendry and his heirs would receive 10 percent of any future net profits from mineral exploration on the land in perpetuity. It is unclear whether anyone else knew at the time that the tribe had surrendered so much of its profits. As Grist previously reported, Tetlin will receive royalties of just 3 to 5 percent from Manh Choh, though similar endeavors elsewhere in Alaska often give tribes much higher returns, as well as partial ownership. Red Dog, for example, is a large zinc mine leased from the Iñupiat in northwest Alaska, who now receive 35 percent of its net profits.
Juneau’s company Contango ORE — which now owns 30 percent of the Manh Choh mine — later hired Adams as a consultant for $60,000 a year, citing his “special knowledge and experience with governmental affairs and tribal affairs issues.” Roy David later said in an affidavit that, “[Neither] I, nor any other council member were aware of this and would never have consented as this practice is prohibited under our governing laws.” Although the contract said that none of Adams’ work would relate to a “certain mineral lease” he had approved, it allowed for discretionary bonuses — payments which totalled an additional $80,000. All told, the payments to Adams came to more than $250,000. Chief Adams may have needed the money: Before he died in 2015, he had a federal $157,042 tax lien, according to the IRS.
Pieces of machinery drive through Fort Knox, Alaska.
Kinross Gold
Pieces of mining machinery drive through Fort Knox, Alaska. Courtesy of Kinross Gold
Manh Choh, Alaska.
Kinross Gold
A conveyer belt, left, carries ore in Fort Knox, Alaska. Kinross plans to transport ore more than 250 miles from the Manh Choh mining site, right, to Fort Knox for processing. Courtesy of Kinross Gold
A conveyer belt carries ore in Fort Knox, Alaska.
Kinross Gold
When Adams passed away, the tribe elected a man named Michael Sam to be chief, and a slate of new members joined the council. But fresh leadership didn’t help resolve the dispute with the tribal corporation. When Flenaugh sat down with Chief Sam in 2016, meeting notes show Sam didn’t know much about the joint venture, though he “stressed that it was his preference to see the miners leave.” Subsequent conversations proved difficult, and it appeared his attitude changed. The corporation’s emails and calls went unanswered. When Flenaugh sent a certified letter to the council, Kristie Charlie, the tribal administrator, returned it to the postmaster unopened. “We have no idea as to why our mail was refused,” Flenaugh later wrote to Sam, who did not respond to Grist’s interview requests.
According to Kevin Gunter, Sam recently has been seen driving new trucks and recreational vehicles and taking vacations that suggest to him an unusual increase in income. “Tetlin is a small village, but when tribal members see something out of place — word will spread,” Gunter wrote in an open letter he distributed among tribal members in October. “Is it possible the KINROSS mining partnership is paying Chief Sam for his tribal position like they did Chief Adams?” He’s now collecting signatures from tribal members, asking Kinross to publicly reveal if they are providing any compensation to Chief Sam or any other tribal officer. Gunter claims tribal council officers visited the homes of those who signed his letter, in what he considers an attempt to intimidate them into removing their names from the petition.
Gunter, who spent his own money consulting lawyers as he tried to parse the tribal council’s dealings, was furious. “You’re gonna sell your whole people out for a $90,000 pick-up truck? And give away all their resources just so you can feel special for a moment?” He scoffs. “Good Lord, you’d live forever if you just fought for your people — they’d always remember you. But that’s just not the choice that was taken.” If the mine’s going to move forward, he says the tribe should at least benefit. “Right now, we’re in generational poverty, and it’s just a dirty cycle,” he said. “It becomes — mentally, physically, spiritually — who you are.”
Questions about the Tetlin Tribal Council’s financial dealings go beyond the Kinross lease. Federal records show that in 2020 and 2021, the council received nearly $10 million in federal grants and contracts, including $4,841,963 in coronavirus relief funds for roughly 380 members. As the pandemic stretched on, tribal members repeatedly called the Tetlin Native Corporation, asking for help tracking down their checks. Since the tribal council received and distributed that cash, the corporation didn’t know anything about it. Under federal law, anyone who disburses more than $750,000 of federal assistance in a fiscal year must obtain an audit. Based on data from the Federal Audit Clearinghouse, it appears the council has never done so. “What happened to the money?” Gunter asked.
Tribal members aren’t the only ones posing such questions of the council; in May, the federal Office of Family Violence Prevention and Services sent the Tetlin Native Corporation a delinquent notice regarding a grant awarded to the council. Flenaugh told the agency that the corporation was not involved, and asked what services the grant was meant to provide. “Tribal shareholders living in Tetlin, when asked, report knowing little to nothing about your grant,” he wrote in a response to the office’s inquiry.
With these financial inconsistencies as a backdrop, the Tetlin Native Corporation is trying to raise awareness about how the mining companies have portrayed their relationship with the tribal council. The joint venture misrepresented the tribal council to both the state and the SEC as a village corporation — something anyone familiar with ANSCA knows is not possible. The corporation alleges this “misappropriation of the Corporation’s ANSCA status [was] to entice investors,” who are often leery of dealing with tribal governments, given the sovereign laws and courts that entails.
When confronted, the joint mining venture wrote a letter saying it “inadvertently suggest[ed]” that status and amending its permit application — directly contradicting the language in its own lease. At that point, though, “they already got what they wanted, and did what they wanted to do,” Smith said. In a statement sent to Grist, the tribal council, which supports the mine and wants the project to proceed, said, “The Tribe reserves all of its legal rights and remedies with respect to the false and defamatory statements” by the corporation.
But the biggest problem may be much more fundamental. Eight years ago, the Tetlin Native Corporation conducted a licensed survey of the 100,000 acres it retained after the council’s 1996 takeover. It alleges some of the Manh Choh mine is on land it still owns. A surveyor the corporation hired earlier this year concurred. Indeed, in 2012, the joint venture that Kinross has since joined admitted in an SEC filing, “We have no assurance of title to our Properties.”
Kinross, of course, disagrees, and told Grist in a written statement “the Manh Choh mine is entirely on this Tetlin [Council]-owned land.” In a 2021 letter to Flenaugh, a lawyer for the mining venture denied any encroachment on any of “the lands reserved to the TNCorp in the 1996 Deed.” In its statement to Grist, Kinross said the council “owns in fee the surface and subsurface rights of their land” and that “[o]ur mineral lease with the Native Village of Tetlin provides access to explore and develop mineral resources on Tetlin Tribal lands.” It also said the venture has acted in good faith with all existing agreements with the tribal council, and that it has invested $600,000 in amenities for the area.
Yet the Tetlin Native Corporation insists that that 1996 deed is defective because the council and the corporation were still disputing the land rights when the lease was signed. Smith says this is an example of “tortious interference,” a legal term for when a third party wrongfully interferes in a business relationship. The tribal corporation wants to quiet the title, a legal process that would clearly establish its ownership of at least the 100,000 acres everyone agrees it retains, and possibly revisiting the wrongful transfer of the 643,147 acres to the council..
In part because its financial resources are limited — Flenaugh continues paying the corporation’s expenses — the corporation has had difficulty asserting its claims. Many lawyers have conflicts of interests; the state of Alaska has invested in the project, and it’s difficult to find a law firm that hasn’t previously worked for the state. Some environmental groups that might normally get involved have stayed quiet, not wanting to tread on tribal sovereignty or dampen fundraising by appearing to take sides against a tribe. But the impression that Tetlin was united in its approval of the mine is mistaken, Gunter said. “We keep our shame. We may talk about it with each other, but we won’t — culturally, we just don’t really go after the leader.”
On a chilly day this fall, Barbara Schuhmann was watching her granddaughter at home in Fairbanks while fielding calls and emails about Manh Choh. A retired lawyer, Schuhmann’s concerns about the ore haul’s threat to public safety led her to join Tracy Charles-Smith, the president of Dot Lake, another tribe on the trucking route, and Patrice Lee, a retired teacher who’s been fighting chronic air pollution in Fairbanks. They founded the non-profit Committee for Safe Communities to demand greater safety and accountability for the project. “All we’re doing is asking a court to order the DOT to follow the law, and its own rules,” Schuhmann said. In October, the Committee sued the Alaska Department of Transportation, seeking an injunction requiring the agency to follow all state regulations before allowing Kinross to haul ore on public roads.
A truck carrying black covered containers drives along the Alaska Highway
Courtesy of Advocates for Safe Alaska Highways
As Gristpreviously reported, the agency plans to use federal highway funds for road and bridge construction and improvements to accommodate the Kinross trucks — without conducting an environmental impact statement. The Committee also alleges that the 95-foot long trucks violate state restrictions governing vehicle length on roads that aren’t specifically designated for industrial use. A state consultant hired to conduct an independent review found that, contrary to previous DOT statements, bridges between the mine and Fort Knox cannot withstand the mining traffic. In some cases, the trucks will be twice as heavy as the federal maximum vehicle weight. The winding highway only has two lanes, and in some places the massive vehicles’ top speed will be about half the posted speed limit, creating dangerous traffic situations.
The DOT did not follow the necessary procedures and public process for adding these bridge replacements to the statewide transportation plan. As a result, this fall, the Federal Highway Administration told the agency to remove them — and froze federal funds for 2024 highway projects for the entire state until this is resolved. “This is extremely rare that a state DOT has ever been in this situation,” says Jackson Fox, executive director of Fairbanks Area Surface Transportation Planning. “It’s a pretty significant issue.” The local planning committee voted Nov. 8 to reject adding the bridge replacements to the DOT’s transportation plans, saying it pushed more urgent projects down the priority list — a move which will make it more difficult to resolve the DOT’s problem with the federal agency.
Darrel VanDeWeg, who recently resigned as the chief of the Salcha Fire and Rescue department, said “anytime somebody puts more vehicles on the road, that’s concerning.” The majority of the first-responders on the route are volunteers. As more commercial vehicles drive on the state’s roads, the risks grow. “It’s not just this road, it’s all the roads in Alaska,” he said. “I just don’t know what the limit is.”
Meanwhile, this fall Governor Mike Dunleavy named DOT Commissioner Ryan Anderson to the board of trustees for the Alaska Permanent Fund, which has invested $10 million in Manh Choh. “Like he doesn’t have enough to do, running the transportation system and the railroad and airports and ferry system and the roads and bridges,” Schuhmann said with a laugh.
Despite the concerns of people like Schuhmann and Gunter, and the pending lawsuits, the mine is slated to begin production by the end of the year. There is less and less time for those who oppose the project to make their voices heard. And though he died eight years ago, Adams’ influence still looms. In a video filmed shortly before he passed away, Adams sat in a camo jacket in a rough-hewn log cabin, reflecting on being a Tetlin tribal member in changing times. “Our everyday, simple goals [are] being challenged by this lack of knowing who we are and where we should be,” he said.
Though he sees things differently, the same questions spur Gunter. For him, the Manh Choh project and the council’s signing away the land is another in a long list of examples of how his tribe has been slowly pushed from its home and its ways of being in the world. “There’s no people without the land. It’s who they are,” he said, part proud, part frustrated at having to explain. “And a lot has already been lost.”
Lois Parshley is an award-winning investigative journalist. Follow her reporting @loisparshley on social media.
The United Nations says the ongoing PFAS contamination of the Cape Fear watershed in North Carolina violates residents’ right to a clean and safe environment, and it has urged the Environmental Protection Agency to hold the polluters accountable.
Its declaration marks the first time the international body has used a human rights framework to address the pervasive threat of so-called “forever chemicals” in the United States. That, in turn, could bolster national and international efforts to reckon with the public health and environmental dangers of the 12,000 common compounds classified as PFAS, which do not break down in the environment or in the body.
The Cape Fear River provides water to 500,000 people. For more than three decades, unbeknownst to residents, the Fayetteville Works chemical plant owned first by DuPont and then by the Dutch company Chemours slowly contaminated the river and local wells with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are carcinogenic. In 2017, the public, long confused by the commonplace occurrence of rare illnesses, learned who was responsible when a local newspaper broke the story.
In April, a grassroots organization trying to bring Chemours to account wrote a detailed letter to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, asking it to consider the contamination a violation of international human rights law. Over Thanksgiving weekend, Special Rapporteur Marcos Orellana did just that in letters sent to DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva — the three companies associated with Fayetteville Works — and the governments of the United States and the Netherlands.
The letters say the Fayetteville Works plant contaminated more than 100 miles of the river for 40 years and counting, and allege that Chemours knew about the harmful effects of PFAS pollution and likely suppressed that information. The missive to the U.S. government urges the EPA to hold the company accountable, while the document sent to Dutch officials demands an end to the export of PFAS waste to the region. Chemours has been sending such material to the plant for processing and disposal because U.S. laws are more lenient than those in Europe.
Cape Fear residents are relying on the U.N.’s action to bring them some redress after years of fighting for epidemiological studies by the EPA and a shutdown of Fayetteville Works.
“We’re hoping this helps the U.S. government find the political courage it needs,” said Emily Donovan, cofounder of community organizing group Clean Cape Fear. “No one wants to be labeled as harboring a human rights violator.”
In the letter to Chemours, Orellana expressed discomfort and alarm at what he called the company’s long-term disinformation campaigns, which included obfuscating the true danger of PFAS chemicals and proferring them as a climate solution with no peer-reviewed science backing the claim. “In one study,” Orellana wrote in the letter to Chemours, “Certain PFAS were found in 97 percent of local residents tested.” Other peer-reviewed studies cited in the letter linked per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in the bloodstream to several forms of cancer, fertility and endocrine disorders, and lung diseases.
The letters follow a series of lawsuits against the same companies over water contamination issues, including one that was recently settled for $110 million in Ohio.
In a statement to Grist and a response to the U.N. letter, Chemours denied wrongdoing, adding that its products are vital to the green transition. “At Chemours, we support science-based regulation, and our remediation activity and emissions control technologies are grounded in the best available science and proven approaches,” said the company. However, it has sought a permit from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to expand PFAS production, particularly of a chemical called GenX that is particularly difficult to filter out of municipal water systems.
Claudia Polsky, the environmental director of the University of California-Berkeley Law Clinic, helped write the letter seeking U.N. intervention. She said most of the work the companies have done to address the problem has focused on avoiding liability, not controlling emissions. She hopes a human rights framing could pave the way for more sweeping reforms.
“The great thing about framing this accurately as a violation of human rights,” said Polsky, “is that framing is capacious enough to include stories about PFAS health harms, ecological harms, corporate responsibility, about lack of regulatory vigor, about inadequate legal remedies for people who are coming out injured.” It also connects the injustices in North Carolina with similar stories elsewhere in the world, bolstering the case for an international movement to address PFAS as a global problem, and regulate them as a class of chemicals rather than one by one.
The U.N. declaration is the first of its kind in the United States. It is preceded by a similar, though less detailed, action by the U.N. Special Rapporteur in Veneto, Italy, which inspired the residents of Cape Fear to believe they might be able to catch the international body’s attention. PFAS, they say, is a problem with global consequences.
Community members and officials in North Carolina castigated the EPA last month for approving a permit for Chemours to import 4 million additional pounds of GenX PFAS waste from the Netherlands, despite a 2019 EPA order requiring the company to reduce its pollution in the Cape Fear watershed. The EPA put the import on pause after local media uncovered it, causing community outcry. The federal government has not yet responded to the rapporteur’s letter.
Harper Peterson, a former mayor of Wilmington, North Carolina, and state senator for the region, is a founding member of the Clean Cape Fear Coalition. He hopes this international attention will force the EPA to adopt tougher drinking water standards, generate enough public outrage for the state to deny Chemours’ expansion permit, and trigger what he calls much-needed epidemiological studies into the harms of PFAS. The challenge, he said, has been proving to legislators that blowback from their constituents will cost them more than corporate pressure to do nothing.
If the U.S. fails to address the issue, the special rapporteur said, it will be viewed as negligent in ensuring the rights of its own citizens. “We remain preoccupied that these actions infringe on community members’ right to life, right to health, right to a healthy, clean, and sustainable environment, and the right to clean water, among others,” Orellana said in the letter.
“Today’s news on loss and damage gives this UN climate conference a running start. All governments and negotiators must use this momentum to deliver ambitious outcomes here in Dubai,” Simon Stiell, the executive secretary for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said at a press conference, according to UN News.
The support of developed nations for the fund was established during last year’s climate summit in Egypt after several years of negotiations.
The United Arab Emirates, whose Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber is the president of COP28, has reportedly pledged $100 million to the fund.
Germany also pledged $100 million, while the European Union committed to $245.39 million, Britain promised “at least” $51 million, the United States agreed to give $17.5 million and Japan $10 million, reported Reuters.
“Governments, the private sector, and innovative sources — such as levies on international shipping and aviation emissions — can all contribute to the fund. Fossil fuel companies that have done the most to drive the climate crisis should also contribute – and if they do not do so voluntarily, governments should compel them to,” said Joe Thwaites, senior advocate for international climate finance at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), in a press release from NRDC.
The COP28 schedule of meetings and events is set to run through December 12 on the campus of Expo City on the outskirts of Dubai. More than 70,000 participants, including delegates, scientists, environmental activists, youth and climate negotiators are expected to attend the climate conference, UN News reported.
At the opening of the summit on Thursday, Stiell said the measures the world is taking are small when bold action is needed.
Just hours before, the World Meteorological Organization released a provisional report detailing that 2023 had “shattered” climate records and would breach 1.4 degrees Celsius of warming — dangerously close to the 1.5 degrees Celsius that had been internationally agreed upon as the threshold to prevent the worst and potentially irreversible climate change impacts, as outlined in the Paris Agreement.
“This has been the hottest year ever for humanity. So many terrifying records were broken,” Stiell said. “We are paying with people’s lives and livelihoods. Science tells us we have around six years before we exhaust the planet’s ability to cope with our emissions. Before we blow through the 1.5-degree limit.”
Published reports leading up to COP28 showed how far off-track humans are in the quest to curb fossil fuel use and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Stiell called for nations to commit to new Nationally Determined Contributions, action plans that require all commitments in 2025 — whether they be for adaptation, finance or mitigation — to be in accordance with a planetary warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The conference in Dubai marks the culmination of the “Global Stocktake,” an evaluation of nations’ progress to date on reaching key provisions of the Paris Agreement, particularly with reference to climate resilience, curbing greenhouse gas emissions and the mobilization of funds for the world’s most vulnerable countries.
Some groups noted that the loss and damage fund still had some issues, such as how it would be financed going forward.
“The absence of a defined replenishment cycle raises serious questions about the fund’s long-term sustainability,” said Harjeet Singh, Climate Action Network International’s head of global political strategy, as Reuters reported.
Stiell said COP28 delegates had two choices: To focus on the lack of progress, continue on the current path with minor changes “and encourage ourselves to do more ‘at some other point in time,’” or properly fund the transition, including loss and damage, and commit to a different energy system, reported UN News.
“If we do not signal the terminal decline of the fossil fuel era as we know it, we welcome our own terminal decline. And we choose to pay with people’s lives,” Stiell said. “Yes, this is the biggest COP yet – but attending a COP does not tick the climate box for the year. The badges around your necks make you responsible for delivering climate action here and at home. I am committing the UNFCCC to track all announcements made and initiatives launched. So that long after the cameras have gone, we can ensure our promises continue to serve the planet.”
Friday’s COP28 agenda will include a “climate action summit” with UN Secretary General António Guterres and world leaders presenting statements on their governments’ actions to address the climate crisis.
“We feel, as you feel, the urgency of the work, and we see, as you see, that the world has reached a crossroads,” said Sultan al-Jaber in his opening address, as UN News reported. “The science has spoken. It has confirmed that the moment is now to find a new road, wide enough for all of us.”
Natural England, a non-departmental adviser for the environment in the UK, is deliberating on the site of a new national park for England. The new national park will be the first one designated in the country since South Downs in 2010.
The park announcement is part of a larger package of projects aimed at preserving nature and increasing green space access. Proposals for the next national park site will be considered by Natural England in summer 2024, and the selected site will need to gain approval from the Environment Secretary before the site will receive its official national park designation.
As the BBC reported, some sites being considered include the Chiltern Hills, the Cotswolds and Dorset. The official search is slated to begin in early 2024.
Currently, England has 10 national parks and 34 national landscapes. Together, these protected areas cover almost a quarter of England.
“Nature is at the foundation of food production, water security, and is critical to our economy, and our mental and physical health,” Environment Secretary Steve Barclay said in a statement. “It is why it is so important to deliver on our commitment to halt the decline of nature and safeguard at least 30 percent of our extraordinary landscapes.”
The UK has a goal to preserve 30% of its land and waters by 2030, although a report from the British Ecological Society released earlier this year warned that the country is not on track to meet this target. The report also warned that much of the protected areas are not actually very effective at preserving nature, particularly due to a lack of sufficient funding.
As part of the newly announced nature preservation package, Natural England announced £25 million ($31.6 million) in project development funding. In total, the package includes 34 landscape recovery projects spanning 200,000 hectares of land. In addition to preserving land for nature, some projects will also be addressing more sustainable agriculture.
The plan for the 11th national park is not only to preserve nature but to also boost public access for those who currently have limited access to natural green spaces, Natural England shared in a press release.
“Having more well connected and wildlife-rich habitats is a central priority for meeting our Nature recovery ambitions,” Tony Jupiter, chair of Natural England, said in a statement. “This includes enhancing landscapes, helping more species thrive, improving climate adaptation and wellbeing for people.”
The announcements follow long-standing funding cuts to national parks since 2010, Rose O’Neill, chief executive of the Campaign for National Parks, told the BBC. Environmentalists are cautiously optimistic about the announcements.
“A new national park is good news for Britain. It’s brilliant for our economy, brilliant for our environment,” Kevin Bishop, chief executive of Dartmoor National Park, told the BBC. “I suppose the key thing for existing national parks is that the money for the new national park needs to be on top of what the existing national parks receive.”
The next United Nations Climate Change Conference, otherwise known as COP28, begins Thursday in the United Arab Emirates.
The conference, which lasts through December 12, comes at a critical moment in global efforts to contain the climate crisis. The latest UN Emissions Gap Report, released ahead of the talks, found that nations’ current emissions reduction pledges, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris agreement, would put the world on track for 2.9 degrees Celsius of warming beyond pre-industrial levels by 2100. Yet 2023, at an average 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming, is already shattering records with the hottest temperatures in 125,000 years, which have fueled deadly heat waves, floods and wildfires.
“The negotiations that are going to start in Dubai… are absolutely crucial, actually, for our chances to limit warming to 1.5C for a variety of reasons,” Romain Ioualalen, global policy manager at Oil Change International, told EcoWatch. “And the first one is because it’s the COP where countries need to agree on a phaseout of fossil fuels, which we know are responsible for the climate crisis and that keep being expanded.”
Fossil Fuel Phaseout
There is a growing movement to negotiate an agreement to phase out fossil fuels at COP28. Despite the fact that the burning of oil, gas and coal is the leading cause of climate change, this has never been pledged at a COP before. COP26 saw a pledge to phase down unabated coal power, and COP27 saw more than 80 nations back a call to phase down all fossil fuels, but this did not make it into the conference’s final text, according to the World Resources Institute.
Yet a growing number of studies show that continued fossil fuel use is “not compatible” with the 1.5 target, Ioualalen said. The Emissions Gap Report pointed out that currently active and planned oil, gas and coal fields would burn through the remaining 1.5 carbon budget by a factor of 3.5. Another study released in October found that the remaining carbon budget may be even smaller than the UN estimates at 250 metric gigatons of carbon dioxide, meaning that the world would blow through it in just over five years of current emissions levels.
Shady Khalil, campaigns lead with Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa, agreed that a fossil fuel phaseout would be “central” to meeting the 1.5 target.
“The continued reliance on fossil fuels is a major driver of greenhouse gas emissions, which are the primary cause of global warming,” Khalil told EcoWatch, adding that a COP28 commitment to justly phasing out fossil fuels “is the only way forward!”
Ioualalen said that a fossil fuel phaseout would have to be backed by a commitment to replace oil, gas and coal with a massive buildout of renewable energy, and an acknowledgement of the fact that wealthy countries have burned more carbon-based fuels and have both the means and the responsibility to jettison them more rapidly and to help poorer nations fund their energy transitions.
But how likely is it after nearly 30 years of COPs that countries would finally agree to end fossil fuels?
Ioualalen said it was “likelier than ever” given that it was for the first time at the top of the agenda and that influential parties, including the European Parliament and several individual European, Latin American and Pacific nations, have backed a phaseout.
“We believe and know that it is achievable and doable,” Khalil added.
Beyond that, climate activists and organizations have rallied around the call.
“Civil society’s unified stance in raising these ambitions and securing commitments at COP28 is a powerful force,” Khalil said. “This collective voice from civil society organizations, activists, and concerned citizens worldwide adds significant pressure and moral imperative for nations to act.”
That said, oil-rich nations like Saudi Arabia will likely use procedure to try to delay an agreement, Ioualalen told EcoWatch.
“It’s still going to be a fight,” he said.
Global Stocktake
COP28 is notable in part because it marks the end of the first Global Stocktake under the Paris agreement. During the stocktake, which will take place every five years after 2023, parties to the agreement review the progress they have made toward its goals and use that assessment to inform future commitments.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) published its synthesis report on the technical dialogue of the first global stocktake in September, which concluded that, while nations remained committed to the Paris agreement, they were far off track from meeting the 1.5 target and needed to curb emissions 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 to get back on course.
The success of this first Global Stocktake, Ioualalen said, will depend on what COP28 delegates choose to do with that information.
The final document “needs to acknowledge the dire situation that we’re collectively in and it needs to make a number of useful recommendations on the way forward,” he said.
Three key recommendations include a phaseout of fossil fuels, a doubling of renewable efficiency, and a clear statement that nations must update their NDCs for 2030 and 2035 in line with these goals.
“The Global Stocktake must conclude with outcomes that kick-start transformative action across the board to limit temperatures to 1.5ºC and respond to increasing climate impacts, building resilience,” Khalil added.
Climate Finance
Another key agenda item at COP28 will be the degree to which wealthier countries will help poorer nations financially to reduce their emissions, adapt to climate impacts and recover from the losses and damages already caused by the climate emergency.
COP27 saw a major breakthrough with an agreement to create just such a “Loss and Damage” fund. However, this year, delegates need to hammer out exactly how this will work. Negotiations between developed and developing countries to craft a list of recommendations for the fund dragged on past the initial four meetings and had to be resolved in a special session in Abu Dhabi in early November.
Khalil said that one of Greenpeace’s main goals at COP28 was “a credible finance package that responds to increasing real-world needs, includes the launch of a new Loss and Damage Fund, and moves us closer to making polluters pay for the destruction and harm they have caused.”
However, Ioualalen thought it was possible that major financial negotiations would be pushed to next year, when countries need to agree on a new target to update the $100 billion a year in climate funding that wealthier countries were supposed to send to poorer ones by 2020.
Canada’s Minister of Environment Steven Guilbeault and Germany’s State Secretary and Special Envoy for International Climate Action Jennifer Morgan said in September they were sure that goal was finally met this year — three years late — but financial data to prove it will not be available until 2025.
Undue Influence
One major concern heading into COP28 is how the fossil fuel industry may work to derail negotiations. This has been a long-running concern at COPs. Last year, at COP27, there were at least 636 fossil fuel lobbyists, more than there were representatives of the 10 nations most impacted by the climate crisis. A report released by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition ahead of this year’s talks found that fossil fuel industry or trade association representatives had attended UN climate talks at least 7,200 times in the last two decades.
This year, however, COP28 faces what Ioualalen called a “conflict of interest of unprecedented dimensions” with the appointment of UAE national oil company CEO Sultan Al Jaber to preside over the talks. Oil Change International has found that both the UAE and its Abu Dhabi National Oil Company are some of the worst culprits when it comes to expanding oil and gas production.
“It is creating a lot of skepticism or lack of trust in the process,” Ioualalen said.
And this was before the Center for Climate Reporting revealed Monday that Al Jaber had planned to use talks with foreign leaders about COP28 to promote oil and gas deals, according to documents shared by a whistleblower.
“The only hope for this COP — and really for this planet — is that our revulsion at revelations like these somehow spurs the movements necessary to break the power of Big Oil,” veteran climate activist and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote in response to the news.
Civil society groups like Oil Change International and Greenpeace are certainly hoping to act as a counterweight to fossil fuel lobbyists at the talks. Both back a move to develop a conflict of interest policy for the UNFCCC. Civil society groups are also working to inform policy-makers, delegates and the public about the danger of relying on unproven technological fixes pushed by the fossil fuel sector like carbon capture and sequestration, which Ioualalen described as a “Trojan horse for continued expansion of oil and gas production disguised as climate action.”
Concerned individuals who can’t attend COP28 can help shape the outcome as well.
Khalil said that the three main things people could do were inform themselves about the climate crisis, its impacts and solutions; raise awareness with friends and family and on social media; and contact their political representatives.
“They can encourage leaders to take bold actions and make ambitious commitments during the conference,” Khalil said.
Ioualalen agreed, and said this was especially true of people in the U.S., which is behind 20 percent of planned oil and gas expansion through 2050.
“People in the U.S. have a real opportunity to tell their government that this is not the way forward and that the U.S. has a responsibility to lead on this question and not just promote the interests of its fossil fuel industry back home,” Ioualalen said.
