Climate problems are starting to find solutions, from solar panels at the Memphis Zoo to state officials readying for potential millions of federal dollars to reduce air pollution.
Memphis:
Zoo officials announced last week it would soon install solar panels on building rooftops, thanks to a $676,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. Memphis Mayor Paul Young said the panels will be the first-ever solar panels installed on any building owned by the city of Memphis.
The grant will also expand community outreach at the zoo and clean energy education programs. A portion of the grant will fund a waste characterization study and regional solid waste master plan for Memphis and Shelby County. Those programs will be run by city and county officials.
These programs further the Memphis Area Climate Action Plan. That plan aims to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emission levels here by 71 percent by 2050. The latest figures from 2020 show the plan is mostly on track. It met GHG reduction targets in the transportation and waste sectors, but missed the mark on energy.
Tennessee:
State officials are working to deliver part of Tennessee’s emissions-reduction plan to the feds by March. That’s the deadline for government agencies to get in line for $5 billion in federal grants to develop and implement “ambitious” plans for reducing GHGs, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The funds come from the Inflation Reduction Act.
Tennessee’s plan is called the Tennessee Volunteer Emission Reduction Strategy (TVERS). It is truly a “volunteer” program.
”While other states have imposed mandates to reduce emissions, we hope to reach established goals through voluntary measures that may differ throughout the state,” reads the TVERS website.
TVERS will be the state’s first-ever climate plan. Memphis has one, as noted above. So does Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga.
Late last year, the state took public opinion on taking action on climate change. The vast majority (75 percent) said they were motivated to act out of concern for the environment and future generations. The biggest challenge for them to act, though, was the high cost of efficient or sustainable alternatives.
Credit: state of Tennessee
To be eligible to get the federal funds, states had to identify low-income communities. State officials found that 54 percent of its census tracts were considered to be low-income/disadvantaged communities (LIDACs) by federal standards. Those applying for the funds must show their projects will bring significant benefits to these communities.
Tennessee Valley
Last month, a new study from the University of Tennessee (UT) found that carbon emissions throughout the Tennessee Valley fell 30 percent since 2005, a decrease of abut 78 million tonnes. The report said half of the decrease was attributable to a 50 percent reduction in emissions from Tennessee Valley Authority’s electricity generation. Another large chunk of the decrease (39 percent) came from agriculture, thanks to the adoption of no-till farming.
The Tennessee Valley region, which covers parts of seven southeastern states, emits about 200 million tonnes of carbon each year, about 3 percent of the nation’s total. Of that, the state said in 2019 it emitted about 112 million tonnes. The Memphis-area emitted about 17 million tonnes.
In Tennessee and the Tennessee Valley, transportation emitted the most GHGs. The UT report said electrifying light-duty vehicles was the single largest carbon reduction opportunity for the Valley. In Memphis, the top carbon emitter came from the energy sector.
Ronnie Bowan attends a public meeting that the EPA held in a church in Memphis on Tuesday Oct. 18, 2022. The meeting was to help inform residents about an elevated cancer risk for those who live in South Memphis near the Sterilization Services of Tn. located on Flordia Street. There are over 100 commercial sanitization sites in the USA, 23 in various locations of which have been associated with cancer risk levels due to Ethylene Oxide Emissions. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)
At Monumental Baptist church in South Memphis, local residents lined up to tell federal officials how cancer possibly linked to their environment had taken their loved ones, friends and family.
Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency flew into town to inform residents of the possible deadly consequences of living near Sterilization Services of Tennessee, a facility that has been located in the neighborhood since 1976.
The company uses ethylene oxide (EtO) to sterilize items as disparate as medical equipment and spices. It operates under the necessary federal and local permits and no protective measures are required to prevent EtO from escaping into the nearby community, including those who worked nearby and children who attended nearby schools.
But in the last few years, EPA officials have learned that EtO was more dangerous than they previously knew. Breathing the chemical may have increased the risk for cancer and other health risks, with risk increasing due to proximity.
Children are also more susceptible, said Daniel Blackman, an EPA administrator responsible for overseeing four states, including Tennessee
Controlled emissions are regulated by equipment designed to prevent EtO from escaping the facility, but fugitive emissions — or emissions that escape the facility — cause the most risk and are not covered under current regulations.
“Risk in Memphis is high and we’re very concerned about that risk,” said Blackman.
EPA officials also noted how there was little residents could do to minimize their risk beyond leaving their homes in South Memphis. There are no air filters that could protect them inside or outside their homes, and spending more time indoors does not reduce their risk.
“The best solution to reducing this risk is to reduce the amount of currently not regulated EtO, fugitive emission that is going out of this facility,” said Caroline Freeman, EPA air and radiation division director.
“As a matter of fact, spending less time near the facility would in fact reduce your risk,” she added.
On Tuesday night, EPA officials addressed resident’s concerns. The Shelby County Health Department director, Dr. Michelle Taylor, also attended.
As soon as the presentation was finished, residents from the affected neighborhoods– Riverside and Mallory Heights–left their church pews to stand in line and address the EPA officials directly.
Maxine Thomas, a South Memphis resident, walked to the microphone, carefully balancing on her cane as she asked how residents were expected to protect themselves.
“What are we going to do? Just die?” she asked. “I want to live a long life. I’m 83 years old.”
Another resident told officials she was born and raised near Sterilization Services of Tennessee, and she lived close enough that she could throw a rock at the building from her backyard. Although she later moved away, she later developed breast cancer, and several of her neighbors had also have had cancer.
“Some of us have lost parents. I lost my father,” said Carolyn Lanton.
Due to the cancer risks, EPA officials and the Shelby County Health Department are looking into how many cancer cases were connected to the residents in the area. The department is also working on creating resources for residents without the means to get tested for cancer, said Taylor.
“We are already working with all of our hospital partners in deep conversations about the number of resources that we will be able to bring there. We know that there are a lot of people in the community who are either uninsured or underinsured, don’t forget about that,” said Taylor. “So we have a lot of people, and a lot of that has to do with what’s going on at the state level, the fact that we are not a Medicaid expansion state. Don’t get me started on that.”
The EPA is also planning to propose new regulations targeting EtO emissions in the coming months, and a final proposal is expected in 2023. Once the regulations are set, the Clean Air Act allows facilities two to three years to comply with the requirements and theEPA has been encouraging facilities to work on reducing current emissions levels.
We have been dying disproportionately, and what we’re being told is to wait. We can’t afford to wait. It’s that we are being sacrificed for polluters. We are being sacrificed for their profits, and we are being sacrificed because people in positions of power are not caring about our lives.
– Justin Pearson, co-founder of Memphis Community Against Pollution
But residents asked why they were still being asked to take on the risk of living near a cancer-causing facility that only employed eight workers, they noted. Others complained that EPA officials had offered few solutions.
“We need something done now. We can’t keep dying for some (profit),” said Adrian Ward, a resident.
“We don’t need nothing but a solution to the problem. Ask them to move somewhere else less populated,” he added.
The problem is, said EPA officials, that Sterilization Services of Tennessee has not broken any regulations and has all the necessary permits. While the facility is one of 100 in the nation, the Memphis facility is one of 23 with higher risk — and no law prevented the facility from moving into a primarily low-income, Black community, a notion that many community activists have labeled as environmental racism.
Sterilization Services of Tennessee in South Memphis is at the center of an Environmental Protection Agency investigation. The EPA is warning people who live near medical sterilizing plants about potential health risks from emissions of ethylene oxide (EtO), a chemical widely used in their operations. (Tennessee Lookout/Karen Pulfer Focht)
“We have been dying disproportionately, and what we’re being told is to wait. We can’t afford to wait,” said Justin J. Pearson, co-founder of Memphis Community Against Pollution. “It’s that we are being sacrificed for polluters. We are being sacrificed for their profits, and we are being sacrificed because people in positions of power are not caring about our lives.”
“The Sterilization Services has got to go,” he said.
“It’s easy for you to say what you said, and I agree with the majority of why people are here. I think the challenge is that’s not how this process works, ” Blackman retorted, adding that communities needed to challenge local zoning laws in order to make the facility move.
Pearson then addressed the EPA panel directly about their efforts to inform the community about the risks they inherited just by living in South Memphis.
“You have failed to adequately inform this community of what’s going on,” he said, adding that MCAP volunteers sent out thousands of flyers and text messages.
The community cannot wait on new regulations, said Pearson, and MCAP planned on continuing mobilization efforts to enact swiffer changes.
“This is the movement that we’re talking about, and we need you to go back to Atlanta and do your job well and know that you’ve got Memphis to support you,” he said.
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
The Mississippi River at Vicksburg. (Photo credit Jim Alvis and Mike Manning, USGS).
The Mississippi River is one of the most endangered rivers in America for 2022 and several groups are asking Congress to protect it.
American Rivers, a national river conservation group, ranked the Mississippi sixth on its top ten list for the year. Pollution and habitat loss are the major threats to the river that runs through 10 states, according to the group.
The report says the Mississippi River is an “internationally important river ecosystem” and an “ecological lifeline” for North America. It provides “vital” habitat for more than 870 species of fish and other wildlife. It is also critically important to more than 325 bird species, dozens of migratory fish, and pollinating insects like the monarch butterfly.
The Mississippi River’s economic impact is $500 billion per year. It supports 1.5 million jobs.
The river is also a “crucial economic engine,” the report says. Agricultural economists have put the value at $400 billion annually. Closing the river would cost $295 million per day for shipping traffic, Gary Lagrange, CEO of the Port of New Orleans, told CBS News in 2019. American River’s report said its current economic impact is $500 billion per year. Manufacturing, tourism, and agriculture account for most of the nearly 1.3 million jobs provided by the river.
The report says nearly 20 million people live in the 123 counties that border the Mississippi River. It provides drinking water for more than 50 cities and towns. But the river is threatened, the report says, primarily by pollution and flooding.
Twenty million people live along the river. Fifty cities rely on it for drinking water.
Pollution is contaminating drinking water and causing toxic algae blooms in and along the Mississippi. For example, Des Moines, Iowa residents will pay $333 million over the next four years to remove nitrogen from their drinking water. Pollution in the river is delivered to the Gulf of Mexico where its has created a 6,000-square-mile “dead zone” that kills marine life. Microplastics and pharmaceuticals rise as new threats to water quality.
Flood damages are escalating, according to the report, thanks largely to climate change. Damages hit hardest in under-resourced communities, especially those comprised of people of color, the report says.
“Historically, white colonists segregated indigenous, immigrant, Black, poor, and other non-dominant social groups to the Mississippi River floodplains,” reads the report. “They bear the brunt of flooding and poor river management to this day.”
Flood damage hits hardest in communities of color and in low-income communities.
For all of this and more, a coalition of about 50 groups is calling for Congress to pass the Mississippi River Restoration and Resilience Initiative (MRRRI). It would coordinate and increase resources for restoration and resilience opportunities up and down the river.
For one, it would set aside about $300 million annually for federal, state, tribal groups, cities, and organizations for improvements in and along the Mississippi River. A quarter of that money would go to projects in in communities of color or low-income communities.
It would also set up a geographic program office within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do this. That office could work across state lines to better organize efforts by the many organizations working there.
Restoration and resilience programs on the Mississippi River are disjointed and poorly coordinated.
Olivia Dorothy, American Rivers restoration director
“At the moment, the restoration and resilience programs on the Mississippi River are disjointed and poorly coordinated,” said Olivia Dorothy, American Rivers restoration director.
The EPA already has such geographic program offices that serve the Great Lakes, Puget Sound, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Everglades.
The MRRRI bill is co-sponsored in the U.S. House by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis).
For cleaning up the polluted Tennessee River watershed, the future is now — with a new network of cutting-edge devices to remove litter, debris, oils, and more.
Last week, the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT), Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful (KTRB), and others launched a network of electric Seabin skimmer devices to clean the water. The project will launch 18 of the skimmers, making it the largest network of such devices in the world. The project was funded with grants from TDOT and Keep America Beautiful.
“Until now, all of our work has only been able to prevent microplastics in our waterways, so we are thrilled to be making an effort to actually mitigate microplastics out of the water,” said Kathleen Gibi, KTRB executive director. “We’re grateful to TDOT and Keep America Beautiful for these — as I see it — revolutionary grants and to our partners who will be maintaining the Seabins to make this trailblazing project possible.”
The Tennessee River starts in Knoxville, flows south through Chattanooga, dips into Alabama, back up through West Tennessee, and into Kentucky. The clean-up network stretches across the watershed with devices located in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama.
Source: Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful
Here’s how KTRB described the skimmers: “The Seabin device, a product out of Australia, works 24/7 to collect marine debris from the surface of the water, much like a pool skimmer that’s electrically operated.
“Each device can remove up to 3,000 [pounds] of marine debris a year, meaning that the 18 devices installed along the Tennessee River watershed will have the potential of removing up to 54,000 [pounds] a year. Even more than that, the devices will also filter out gasoline, oils, and microplastics from the water.”
In 2017, researchers called the Tennessee River “one of the most plastic-polluted rivers ever recorded in the world.” That year, scientist and endurance swimmer Dr. Andreas Fath swam the nearly 652-mile length of the river with sampling devices connected to his body. His results showed the Tennessee contained 16,000 cubic feet of micro plastics per cubic meter of water, nearly twice as much as China’s polluted Yangtze River, and 8,000 percent higher than levels found in the Rhine River.
Microplastics include plastic bottles, shopping bags, styrofoam, straws, and more. Some of these items remain intact. Others disintegrate into smaller particles that remain in the water, threatening fish and drinking water.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has said nearly 70 percent of the trash found in rivers comes from inland sources, like litter left on streets that flows into storm drains, which flow into rivers. This is why TDOT said it got involved in the new Seabin clean-up system.
“TDOT’s partnership with Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful demonstrates the link between roadside litter and debris that ends up in our waterways,” said TDOT Commissioner Joseph Galbato. “Investing in this substantial network of litter removal devices is another example of how TDOT promotes innovative solutions to making our state cleaner and keeping our waterways clear.”
(Credit: Mississippi River Mayors Cities and Towns Initiative)
Plastic is the top trash left behind in the Mississippi River corridor, according to a new report from the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative (MRCTI) and the United Nations (UN) Environment Programme.
(Credit: Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative)
In April, citizen-scientists collected litter in St. Paul, Minnesota; St. Louis, Missouri; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana for the beginning phase of the Mississippi River Plastic Pollution Initiative. They collected 75,184 pieces of litter and 75 percent of that — 660 pounds — was plastic.
The top items included cigarette butts (filters are made of plastic), plastic food wrappers, and plastic beverage bottles. These were followed by plastic foam fragments, aluminum cans, hard plastic fragments, and plastic bags.
(Credit: Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative)
“Community members scientifically surveyed areas greater than 20,000 football fields to gather this valuable data with Debris Tracker [technology],” said Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineering professor at the University of Georgia and National Geographic Explorer. “The results show that there are opportunities for interventions in each pilot city to reduce the quantity of plastic ending up in our environment and the Mississippi River.”
(Credit: Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative)
Memphians collected and tagged litter in April, too, using the UN’s Debris Tracker. They found 158 pieces of litter near Mount Zion Church on Weaver Road close to T.O. Fuller State Park. There, they encountered beverage bottles, food wrappers, assorted bits of rubber, metal, and plastic, and more. On Overton Square (the block containing Saltwater Crab, between Diana and Florence St.), they found 124 piece of litter, including straws, cigarette butts, plastic cups, food wrappers, and more.
The Mississippi River corridor is a draining system for 40 percent of the continental United States. Litter in cities gets to the river from storm drains and smaller waterways. It poses a threat to the river’s environmental quality and ecosystem health.
Litter along the river ultimately makes its way to the Gulf of Mexico and into the ocean. Approximately 11 million metric tons of plastic enter the oceans every year, with rivers contributing to a significant portion of that amount.
(Credit: Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative)
“We learned a lot through this new approach regarding where waste gathers, how much of it there is, and the type,” said Baton Rouge Mayor Sharon Weston Broome. “We now have valuable information to help support not only existing storm water programs but improve our waste management systems and infrastructure going forward.”
A shipment of coal arrives to feed the Allen Fossil Plant on President’s Island.
Tennessee could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars if the U.S. would rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change.
President Donald Trump removed the U.S. from the agreement in 2017. He argued the agreement would undermine the U.S. economy and the country would only rejoin under negotiated terms that were fair “to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers.” President-elect Joe Biden promised in November to rejoin the agreement.
A new report from a Duke University researcher shows the benefits of rejoining the agreement for Tennessee. Dr. Drew Shindell, Nicholas Distinguished Professor of Earth Sciences at Duke, presented Tennessee and national findings to a federal House committee in August.
”The United States can save lives, reduce illnesses, and save trillions of dollars by acting now on its own — at a local, state, regional, and national level — to eliminate the primary impacts of fossil-fuel pollution,” reads the report. “Over the next decade and beyond, eliminating fossil fuel combustion in this state and others and in coordination with the rest of the world will benefit Americans enormously while bringing the United States closer to the climate targets in the Paris Agreement.”
Findings from the report were released earlier this month by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Nashville) and many Nashville-based environmental groups.
“I am confident President-elect Biden will keep his promise and the U.S. will rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement in 2021,” Cooper said in a statement. “It was reckless and irresponsible to leave the Agreement and we will be spending decades trying to reverse the impact on our climate.”
Dr. Drew Shindell
Shindell’s research shows nine adverse impacts of climate change on public health:
• It worsens air pollution.
• It causes longer and more intense allergy seasons.
• It promotes the spread of dangerous diseases such as dengue fever and West Nile virus.
• It increases the risks of contracting food and waterborne diarrheal disease.
• It threatens food security by impairing crop quality and output.
• It triggers stress-related disorders and increases the incidence of mental health problems.
• It causes precipitation extremes, like lethal floods and dangerous droughts.
• It produces extreme heat events that cause deaths from heat stroke and cardiovascular and respiratory disease.
• It increases the frequency and intensity of wildfires, resulting in fatalities and increased hospitalizations from smoke exposure.
Joining the agreement would yield health benefits by reducing air pollutants and limiting the number of extreme heat days, according to the report.
For Tennessee, a cooler climate could mean:
• avoiding 79,000 premature over the next 50 years
• avoiding about 69,000 emergency room visits and hospitalizations for cardiovascular and respiratory disease
• avoiding 23,000 childhood bronchitis cases
• avoiding more than 3.9 million lost workdays
• avoiding nearly 48 percent of the premature deaths in 10 years
[pullquote-2-center] Shindell said the economic value of these health benefits would be $630 billion.
Last year, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee told reporters he was unsure whether or not climate change was real, according to The Tennessean.
“I wish I were scientifically smart enough to know the reasons for climate change, and I don’t,” Lee said. “But I certainly believe we have a responsibility to protect the environment and to limit those influences that may impact the climate change in our country, and let the scientists and the experts determine what’s responsible for it.”
AP – States and the federal government need to coordinate their efforts to monitor and protect the water of the Mississippi River, a new analysis urges.
The study released Tuesday by the National Research Council calls on the Environmental Protection Agency to coordinate the efforts affecting the river and the northern Gulf of Mexico where its water is discharged.
“The limited attention being given to monitoring and managing the Mississippi’s water quality does not match the river’s significant economic, ecological and cultural importance,” said David A. Dzombak, professor of environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Dzombak, who was chairman of the committee that prepared the report, said that “in addressing water-quality problems in the river, EPA and the states should draw upon the useful experience in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, where for decades the agency has been working together with states surrounding the bay to reduce nutrient pollution and improve water quality.”
Because it passes through or borders many states, the river’s quality is not consistently monitored, the report said.
In the north, the Upper Mississippi River Basin Association has promoted many cooperative water-quality studies and other initiatives, the report said. That group includes Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin.
But there is no similar organization for the lower-river states — Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana — and they should strive to create one, the report said.
EPA also should support better coordination among states, and among its four regional offices along the river corridor, the report says.
Greater effort is needed to ensure that the river is monitored and evaluated as a single system, said the report.
While the 10 states along the river conduct their own programs to monitor water quality, state resources vary widely and there is no single program that oversees the entire river.
In recent years, actions have reduced much point-source pollution, such as direct discharges from factories and wastewater treatment plants.
But the report notes that many of the river’s remaining pollution problems stem from nonpoint sources, such as nutrients and sediments that enter the river and its tributaries through runoff.
Nutrients from fertilizers create water-quality problems in the river itself and contribute to an oxygen-deficient “dead zone” in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
The National Research Council is an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, an independent organization chartered by Congress to advise the government on scientific matters. — Randolph E. Schmid
Justin Fox Burks 
Dr. Drew Shindell 