https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022GL100247

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/596865

Following on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA in May, the Biden administration recently approved an amendment that weakens Clean Water Act protections for wetlands. The EPA regulation language on wetlands was amended — while excluding the standard public review process — with EPA administrator Michael Regan stating there was “no alternative” due to the court’s ruling.

Despite claims from the Biden administration and the EPA that their hands are tied, the Sackett ruling — along with any other Supreme Court rulings — could be overturned by Congress if the political will existed to do so. While many individual states could pass their own protections for wetlands that supersede the EPA regulations, 20 U.S. states have statutes in place that prohibit them from having regulations that are more stringent than federal regulations. Environmental organizations, Native tribes and others are opposing the Supreme Court ruling and EPA regulation change, and there are likely to be lawsuits against this rollback of wetland protections.

More than 50% of U.S. wetlands have been destroyed since colonization began. Why does this matter? Who wants a swamp in their backyard anyway?

Developers and agricultural interests have led the charge of draining, filling in and paving over wetland areas, which are everything from ephemeral vernal pools, swamps, bogs, and coastal salt marshes, to waterlogged floodplains around rivers and lakes. Many wetlands disappear above ground during dry times and re-emerge during rainy periods. All wetlands are crucial to flood prevention and drought, acting as sponges for rainfall and holding water above or below ground during dry times to continue feeding plant life. Just one acre of wetland can store over one million gallons of flood waters.

More in the link!

cross-posted from: https://ls.buckodr.ink/post/338745

Ecosia is great in general, they've done stuff like this before for wildfires and such, and they are carbin negative and use 100% of their profits for helping the planet

The search engine is also pretty good too!

Hailed as the largest freshwater lake in China, Poyang Lake in east China's Jiangxi Province is a famous scenic spot with spectacular scenery. But recently, the water level in Poyang Lake dropped rapidly.

As of 8: 00 a.m. on September 10, the water level of Poyang Lake Duchang Hydrometric Station was seen at 11.89 meters, and the water level of Xingzi Station, which is the landmark hydrometric station of Poyang Lake, has dropped to 11.98 meters.

According to the local hydrology department, on July 20, Poyang Lake's water level fell below the low water line - which is at 12 meters - making 2023 the earliest year to enter the dry period since 1951.

It is expected that rainfall in Jiangxi Province will not be frequent in September, therefore Poyang Lake will enter a continuously receding period under this circumstance.

UN warns the scale of dredging has a devastating effect on biodiversity and coastal communities.

Almost six billion tonnes of sand and other sediment are extracted from the world’s seas and oceans every year on average, according to the United Nations.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warned on Tuesday of the devastating toll on biodiversity and coastal communities, adding that the scale of dredging was growing, with dire consequences.

“The scale of environmental impacts of shallow sea mining activities and dredging is alarming,” said Pascal Peduzzi, who heads UNEP’s analytics centre GRID-Geneva.

He pointed to the effects on biodiversity, as well as on water turbidity, and noise effects on marine mammals.

The UNEP launched a global data platform on sediment extraction in marine environments, Marine Sand Watch, which uses artificial intelligence to track and monitor dredging activities of sand, clay, silt, gravel and rock in the world’s marine environment.

It uses so-called Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals for ships combined with artificial intelligence to identify the operations of dredging vessels, including in hotspots like the North Sea and the East Coast of the United States.

The signals emitted by the vessels allow “access to the movements of every ship on the planet”, Peduzzi was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

‘Gigantic proportions’

The platform estimates that out of some 50 billion tonnes of sand and gravel used by humanity each year, between four and eight billion tonnes come from the world’s oceans and seas.

“This represents six billion tonnes on average every year, or the equivalent of more than one million dump trucks every day,” Peduzzi said.

He pointed out that “our entire society depends on sand as a construction material”. At the same time, sand plays a vital environmental role, including protecting coastal communities from rising sea levels.

Data analysed for the years 2012 to 2019 shows the scale of dredging is growing and that the world is approaching the natural replenishment rate of 10 to 16 billion tonnes of sediment washed into its oceans each year.

This is especially concerning for regions where dredging is more intense and extraction already substantially surpasses the sediment budget from land to sea, said the report.

Tipping point

While the tipping point has not been reached at a global level, Peduzzi cautioned during a press conference that in some localities, “we are extracting it faster than it can replenish itself”.

“This is not sustainable,” he added.

The North Sea, Southeast Asia and the East Coast of the United States are among the areas with the most intense marine dredging.

However, international practices and regulatory frameworks vary widely.

While some countries, including Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia, have banned marine sand export in the last 20 years, others lack any legislation or monitoring programmes.

China, followed by the Netherlands, the US and Belgium have the biggest dredging fleets, Arnaud Vander Velpen, a GRID-Geneva sand industry expert, said.

Peduzzi described extraction vessels as giant vacuums, cleaning seabeds, and “sterilising” them, warning that this leads to the disappearance of oceanic microorganisms and threatens biodiversity.

Activists in both countries complain that regulators prioritize the economic well-being of polluting industries over the environment and public health.

This story was co-published with Public Health Watch and Houston Landing.

People living on the east side of Harris County, Texas, have an unlikely bond with residents of Berre-l’Étang in southern France: They all inhale toxic chemicals from plants owned by LyondellBasell, one of the world’s largest petrochemical companies.

In the summer of 2020, LyondellBasell’s 2,471-acre industrial complex in Berre-l’Étang had more than half a dozen major incidents in which flares released large amounts of chemicals into the air. Thick clouds of smoke drifted over the community of 14,000. The flares burned so brightly, photographs show, that the normally pitch-black night was replaced by what looked like a prolonged sunset. The smoke carried benzene and other toxic substances to Marseille, France’s second-most-populous city, 10 miles away.

A year later in Texas, two major chemical releases at LyondellBasell facilities in Harris County forced residents of Jacinto City, Galena Park, and neighboring towns to shelter indoors. One of those incidents killed two workers and sent dozens to area hospitals.

Last year Public Health Watch and the Investigative Reporting Workshop examined LyondellBasell’s record in Harris County, and that project made us curious about the company’s performance outside the United States. We chose to look at Berre-l’Étang because both it and Harris County are at the center of their countries’ petrochemical industries — and both struggle to balance the economic benefits they gain with the concerns of residents who are breathing noxious fumes.

In eastern Harris County, 10 oil refineries process 2.6 million barrels of crude oil a day, and thousands more facilities store or manufacture the chemicals the industry uses and produces. Petrochemical plants loom over houses and playgrounds. A terminal holding millions of barrels of chemicals is seven blocks from a middle school.

Berre-l’Étang lies in one of the most heavily industrialized areas of France, where it and nine other towns surround a 60-square-mile lake, Étang de Berre. A 2017 study of some of those towns found that 63 percent of the population had at least one chronic disease. The French national average is 37 percent.

Local officials in France appear to have even less power to deal with industrial emissions than those in Texas, where state regulations are notoriously lax. Activists in both countries complain that regulators prioritize the economic well-being of polluting industries over the environment and public health.

In 2018, Éliane Jurado, a retired teacher living in Berre-l’Étang, created a citizens platform, LibAIRté, pledging to “defend the air quality of my grandchildren until my last breath.” LyondellBasell’s 2020 flaring — a process that burns off excess gas and relieves pressure — galvanized support for the movement and forced the city government to organize a town-hall meeting.

But in the end, Jurado says, nothing happened. She left Berre-l’Étang in 2021 and is still looking for someone to take over LibAIRté’s Facebook group, which at one point had 1,300 members.

A LyondellBasell spokesperson said the company declined to comment for this story.

read more : https://grist.org/health/in-a-small-french-town-where-houston-based-lyondellbasell-is-a-fixture-residents-complain-of-unending-pollution/