Dry cleaners are just about everywhere. 

You’ll spot them on the corner of your block, in the neighborhood strip mall, in malls and across the street from schools and hospitals. They’re unassuming, usually housed in small buildings with minimal signage. They’re easily overlooked by a typical passerby. 

It’s what’s underneath that’s cause for concern. 

Dry cleaners in California used, up until this year, a toxic chemical called perchloroethylene, or PCE for short, to launder clothes. The chemical is particularly effective at ridding clothes of tough stains. 

But misuse, accidental spills, and leaks from pipes and underground storage tanks meant the chemical found its way into the soil beneath dry cleaners. From there, it flowed deeper until it hit groundwater, eventually settling to the bottom.

PCE likely began polluting the soil and groundwater beneath dry cleaners in the 1940s and went undetected until the late 1980s. California banned the substance from use in dry cleaners as of Jan. 1, 2023. People exposed to PCE are more likely to get kidney cancer, bladder cancer and kidney disease, according to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. 

I first learned about PCE and its impacts while reporting about a grant the city of San Luis Obispo had earned so it could clean up its groundwater. The city on California’s Central Coast had discovered that just a few dry cleaners in town, most closed down by now, had created a large plume of toxic PCE polluting the groundwater. 

A fellow reporter, Adam Echelman, who was at The Modesto Bee at the time, said there was a lot more to the story than just San Luis Obispo’s polluted water. He had recently finished a series of stories about how the city of Modesto won a lawsuit against chemical companies for knowingly selling PCE to dry cleaners in the area. 

He encouraged me to look into how widespread this issue was of PCE pollution from dry cleaners. 

What I found was surprising. 

Studies estimate that at least 75% of dry cleaners have caused plumes of PCE contamination under their businesses. These plumes can stretch for miles, flowing under homes, businesses and hospitals. 

PCE can volatilize, or transform from a liquid into a gas, and then seep upwards through cracks in foundations and sidewalks, where it can then be breathed in. The chemical also doesn’t break down easily, so many former dry cleaners turned into restaurants, cafes or salons could have fumes from a forgotten plume leaching into their air. 

As I dove into the story as a 2023 California Health Equity Fellow, it quickly became clear that the problem of PCE pollution touched nearly every city and every town in California. 

I began interviewing experts familiar with the science of PCE contamination and how it could leach from a concrete floor down into the soil, then the groundwater and perhaps back up in the form of toxic fumes. I asked them how widespread this contamination was and got back a lot of shrugs and exasperated sighs at the sheer complexity of the problem. 

I spoke to environmental consultants who had worked on dozens or even hundreds of PCE cleanup projects. Each one explained how expensive it was to rid the soil and groundwater of the chemical — often drumming up bills for the dry cleaners in the tens of millions of dollars. 

The state officials I spoke to said they knew about the problem — it was just too big of a problem. They weren’t equipped to handle it, they said, there wasn’t enough money or time. 

I found out that if the state agency largely in charge of dealing with the pollution maintains its current annual funding for the dry cleaner cleanups, it could take from 220 to 2,941 years to fund the necessary remediation. 

Meanwhile, countless communities across California sit atop dry cleaner pollution plumes, many unknowing of the invisible threat. 

As I interviewed dry cleaner business owners, another story began to develop. They told me about how they’d felt betrayed by the state, which had, for so many years, allowed them to use PCE with few guidelines except to control fumes once emitted from dry cleaner machines, and now they were being punished. 

They said generations of dry cleaners before them didn’t know that it was wrong to pour used PCE down the drain. Or an accidental spill on concrete floors didn’t seem like that big of a deal. 

Now, many face cleanup bills of $1 million to more than $10 million if the state finds a plume of PCE pollution originated from their dry cleaning business. The bills are far too much for many to cough up for the dying industry, as state grants can be tough to find and don’t cover the brunt of the costs. 

During my reporting, I looked to other states for solutions. Many had created PCE plume remediation funds by taxing the sale of the chemical and requiring dry cleaning businesses pay annual fees to avoid financial liability should a plume of contamination be found beneath their business. 

But the states where PCE pollution had been mostly handled were often much smaller than California. The states had needed to deal with pollution from just a few hundred dry cleaners. 

In California, there are at least 7,500 dry cleaner sites where pollution could be present. 

A big challenge through reporting on my series of stories about PCE pollution was that I also had to maintain my daily beat reporting. I have two beats at The San Luis Obispo Tribune: education and environment issues. 

I found myself taking time outside of my normal work hours to report on the PCE project. At times, it became unmanageable and I quickly found myself beginning to burn out. It was hard, however, to justify taking time off from either: my beat reporting was necessary for The Tribune to fill papers and meet pageview goals, while the USC Center for Health Journalism had granted me money to dutifully pursue the PCE project. 

Eventually, I found a balance between foregoing some of my beat stories, which in some cases could be passed along to other reporters in the newsroom, and dedicating more time to the PCE project. I was then able to travel to Lake Tahoe, Sacramento and Los Angeles to pursue deep dives into the dry cleaner pollution issues there and interview dozens of sources. 

Although I ended up reporting enough to fill a three-part series, there is certainly a lot left to uncover. 

The state has changed the goalposts on PCE pollution, making it more difficult to meet strict health standards that many environmental consultants say are unnecessary. Plus, PCE pollution may not be limited to the soil and groundwater: It could be leaching into rivers, streams and the ocean. 

I received incredible feedback from my series, mostly from folks in the dry cleaning or environmental consulting industries who were thankful I’d shed light on this issue. 

I hope my series can inspire journalists in communities across California and the rest of the nation to look into the groundwater issues near them and ask whether PCE is present.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Decades of unfettered pollution from dry cleaners have caused a quiet disaster in California appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

California has won federal approval to enact a first-in-the-nation rule requiring railroads in the state to reduce, and eventually eliminate, harmful air pollution from their locomotives.

The railroad industry is already challenging the proposed rule in court. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allowed the state on Wednesday to adopt regulations approved by the California Air Resources Board in April that will require railroads entering the state to replace their most polluting diesels with cleaner models.

Zero-emissions locomotives will be required for all passenger and industrial engines built after 2030 and for all freight-line locomotives after 2035. Any polluting locomotive 23 years old or older will not be allowed in the state after 2030.

The rule would also allow locomotives to run their engines on idle for no more than 30 minutes at a time. Train operators must open spending accounts by next July and make deposits every year to buy or lease cleaner diesel trains and buy zero-emissions infrastructure. “This common-sense update will allow California to stay a leader in protecting people from the harmful health impacts of diesel pollution,” said Katherine Garcia, a transportation officer at the Sierra Club. “We thank the EPA for righting a wrong and taking this crucial step toward protecting vulnerable communities near rail lines.”

The Air Resources Board has predicted that the emissions limits would prevent 3,200 premature deaths and save $32 billion in health costs. Because of the EPA’s previous restrictions, the state board has been limited over the past 25 years to negotiating voluntary emissions agreements with Union Pacific and BNSF Railway. The board says those two lines produce 95% of all locomotive emissions statewide. “Locomotive emissions disproportionately pollute communities near rail yards, causing significant and unjust public health and air quality issues, said Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif. “While this is an important step, I will keep pressing the EPA to follow California’s lead and address pollution from locomotives across the country.”.

But railroad companies say the restrictions will harm interstate transportation more than they will help the public. “Given the importance of the interstate nature of rail transportation (which operates by linking intrastate and interstate networks), Congress has repeatedly directed that railroads are to be regulated solely at the federal level,” the Association of American Railroads and the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association argued in a suit filed in June in federal court in Sacramento.

Federal pollution-control law, they contended, “provides exclusive authority to the federal government to set emission standards for new locomotives, expressly precluding state and local regulators from adopting or attempting to enforce such standards or other requirements.”

The suit, which seeks to halt the regulations, is pending before U.S. District Judge John Mendez.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post California can require railroads to eliminate pollution, U.S. EPA decides appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The deep, crystal blue waters of Lake Tahoe are the iconic centerpiece of one of California’s most famed recreation areas.

A local water provider is among the biggest cheerleaders of the lake’s legendary clarity, boasting this on its website: 

“Snow falls in winter, melts in spring and travels through a vast network of groundwater aquifers to Lake Tahoe,” the South Lake Tahoe Public Utility District says. “By pumping water from these aquifers, the South Lake Tahoe area has some of the tastiest and purest water in California.” 

But that doesn’t tell the whole story. 

Investigations over several years have found that even the “purest” groundwater is not immune to contamination from a carcinogenic chemical long used by a common business operation found in towns and cities across the state: dry cleaners. 

Since the 1940s, perchloroethylene, or PCE for short, has been a popular chemical employed in dry cleaning shops across the country.

The liquid is fairly effective at ridding clothes of stubborn stains, but it also easily spreads beyond its intended use, seeping silently beneath the shops and spreading in plumes in the ground below. 

That’s because in dry cleaners’ common practice — before better equipment and regulations were developed — the chemical was often dumped down drains or splashed on porous floors. 

As a result, over the past 50 years, PCE leaked into the soil and groundwater under the handful of former South Lake Tahoe dry cleaners — and likely thousands of others in California. 

In that time, the pollution mixed with the groundwater and eventually spread north toward the great blue lake. 

In the South Lake Tahoe groundwater, PCE has been detected at levels more than 1,000 times above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s health limits, according to reports conducted by a consultant for the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board. 

Area schools, daycare centers, homes, hospitals and care facilities may be at risk of exposure to the harmful pollution, which can leach into the air, the reports say.

Officials have known about the PCE pollution in the South Lake Tahoe area since 1989, and have for years tried to work with the owners of the now-shuttered dry cleaners to clean it up. 

But the efforts at Lake Tahoe and beyond have not gotten far, and now collectively, the pollution poses a multi-billion-dollar problem statewide. 

“I don’t think there is an expectation that we’re going to necessarily be able to clean up the aquifer,” said Brian Grey, an engineering geologist with the local water board. “But there are going to be actions conducted that will be protective of human health, and we’ll be able to provide clean drinking water to residents.”

DRY CLEANING CHEMICALS POLLUTED WATER ACROSS CALIFORNIA 

Beyond the pure waters of South Lake Tahoe, decades-old pollution from dry cleaners has become a ubiquitous problem that plagues California. 

That’s because dry cleaning businesses are a staple in nearly every community: They’re in strip malls, on street corners, in shopping centers, under apartments and in grocery stores. 

They largely use chemicals to clean precious prom dresses, work suits, delicate jackets and uniforms. 

Up until as recently as last year, PCE was used widely in California dry cleaning operations to launder those clothes. 

Since Jan. 1, California has prohibited PCE from being used by dry cleaners — instead encouraging wet cleaning using detergents, or dry cleaning with chemicals considered environmentally friendly. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is now following the state’s lead and preparing to possibly ban the chemical from use in dry cleaners nationwide. 

“It’s important to transition away to new chemicals, but also to address all this legacy contamination,” said Jill Johnston, an associate professor of population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California. “Because PCE doesn’t go away, it’ll degrade into other toxic chemicals.” 

California is home to at least 7,500 dry cleaning business locations — some in operation for years, others long closed. 

It’s estimated that at least 75% of those businesses have created plumes of underground PCE contamination. The plumes can stretch for miles and vaporize from the soil into the indoor air of nearby homes, schools and businesses.

PCE CONTAMINATION EXPLAINED

Exposure to PCE is associated with higher chances of developing certain cancers, kidney disease, liver disease, reproductive and birth defects, neurotoxicity and other adverse health impacts, according to numerous scientific studies. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set safe drinking water limits for the chemical at 5 micrograms per liter of water. 

NO STUDIES IN CALIFORNIA ON PCE’S IMPACT ON PUBLIC HEALTH

Calculating the totality of PCE’s impact on California’s health is difficult, however, as no large-scale studies have been conducted in the state. 

One of the most complete accountings of PCE’s health risks came from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where residents and civilian employees who lived or worked there from the 1950s through 1985 were exposed to drinking water contaminated with the chemical. 

Studies found that those exposed to PCE were more likely to get kidney cancer, bladder cancer and kidney disease, according to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. 

In another documented case, residents in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, were exposed to PCE in their drinking water in the 1960s. Studies later found that exposure to the chemical led to a plethora of possible health effects.

“When exposed to high levels of PCE in drinking water, residents experienced reproductive health impacts including delayed time-to-pregnancy, increased risk of placental abruptions and an increased risk of congenital malformations,” a 2021 scientific article says. “Babies exposed to high levels of PCE grew up to have reduced performance on neuropsychological tests, increased risk of bipolar disorder, PTSD, illicit drug use, vision problems and certain types of cancer.” 

Another epidemiology study found that people living for an average of more than 10 years near a dry cleaner were exposed to PCE in the air at low levels. Those people were found to have reduced cognitive performance on a test of reaction time, vigilance and visual memory, according to the 1995 study.

STATE KNEW ABOUT DANGERS AND SHEER EXTENT OF PCE POLLUTION 

California officials have known about the massive extent of the pollution in the state, and its danger to people, since at least the early 1990s. 

In 1992, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board sounded the alarm about the potential extent of the burgeoning problem in its area. 

“(PCE), a known carcinogen, has degraded at least 215 wells in the Central Valley of California. … The majority of these wells are large system municipal wells of 200 connections or more,” the board said in its report. “With approximately 285 dry cleaners in just the metropolitan areas of Sacramento, Chico, Lodi, Modesto, Turlock, Stockton and Merced, one would expect that many more wells will be degraded by PCE in the future.” 

The report noted that groundwater cleanup was necessary to ensure water supply agencies can provide safe drinking water. 

“Deciding who should investigate and clean up groundwater is a complex political/legal issue since the PCE discharges from the dry cleaners were all approved,” the report said. “Because most dry cleaners are small businesses, which may not have the financial capability to define the contamination plume and conduct cleanup, other resources may be needed. A statewide cleanup fund may be appropriate.”

During the years following the 1992 report, the state worked to phase out PCE use in dry cleaners. 

In 2002, a $3- to $12-per-gallon fee was imposed on PCE to fund a program to transition dry cleaners away from the chemical.

In 2007, the California Air Resources Board formally gave dry cleaners in the state 15 years to discontinue their PCE use. The agency gave grants to dry cleaners to purchase alternative equipment and attend training programs. 

But there simply hasn’t been solid statewide funding to clean up the decades of pollution that had already accumulated. 

DRY CLEANER POLLUTION CLEANUP FUNDS HAVEN’T BEEN ENOUGH 

In Senate Bill 158 passed in 2021, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control was allocated $500 million toward cleaning up pollution in disadvantaged communities. Of that, $152 million was put toward investigating PCE contamination from dry cleaners in those communities. 

Dry cleaners in non-disadvantaged areas, or areas where neighborhoods are typically less burdened with other pollutants and residents have a higher median income — even if they may have caused pollution — were generally not a part of the funding initiative. 

The state water board also has a separate pot of roughly $34 million each year to clean up various chemical pollution plumes throughout California, including petroleum and PCE. The fund is called the Site Cleanup Subaccount Program, established in 2014, and it’s funded through a portion of the 2-cent-per-gallon fee charged to gas stations for petroleum stored in underground storage tanks.

The millions invested in investigating and cleaning up the leftover dry cleaning pollution may seem like a good first step, but it’s far from what the state needs to deal with the massive task ahead. 

The state water board has about 700 polluted dry cleaner sites it’s working to clean up and estimates there could be at least 10,000 left, according to Cheryl Prowell, the state water board’s supervisor of underground storage tank and cleanup programs section. Another 325 dry cleaner sites have been classified as “closed” in the water board’s data, meaning the pollution may have been remediated, Prowell added. 

“Dry cleaners can be really difficult because they’re often small, family-owned businesses,” said Prowell. “They don’t have a lot of resources.” 

Each cleanup — from investigation to remediation — costs an average of $1 million to $10 million. 

That puts estimates to clean up all PCE-contaminated dry cleaners in California at anywhere from $7.5 billion to $100 billion, according to calculations from figures sent by the state water board and the Department of Toxic Substances Control. 

So, should the state water board maintain its current annual funding available for the dry cleaner cleanups, it could take from 220 to 2,941 years to fund the necessary remediation. 

Meanwhile, countless communities across California sit atop dry cleaner pollution plumes. 

HOW SOUTH LAKE TAHOE IS DEALING WITH THE POLLUTION 

The pollution in South Lake Tahoe is an example of how PCE can be incredibly difficult to address. 

The plume spread during the 1970s from just two coin-operated dry cleaners and a car mechanic shop (PCE was commonly used as a degreaser through the 1970s, although typically in weak concentrations compared to the pure PCE used by dry cleaners). 

All three businesses stopped operating or using PCE by the 1980s. 

Because PCE is heavier than water, the spilled or discarded chemical easily seeps through small cracks in plumbing and floors, trickling down until it meets groundwater or bedrock. Then, it slowly flows and mixes with the groundwater. 

The plume under South Lake Tahoe stretches about a mile north toward the lake, which is fed by the underground aquifers and rivers forming from snowmelt in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

As a result of the pollution, the local water purveyor in the area has been forced to shut down some of the wells it uses to supply water to residents and tourists who come for fresh air and recreation on and around Lake Tahoe.

UNDER SOUTH LAKE TAHOE

The regional water quality control board has worked for decades with the owners of the dry cleaner properties in an attempt to remediate the pollution. But those owners have since filed lawsuits in state court generally denying their responsibility for creating the plume of toxic pollution. 

Meanwhile, the PCE plume doesn’t just sit idly in the soil and groundwater — the chemical goes through a process called volatilization and becomes a gas that can then seep upwards into the air of homes and businesses. 

“Previous investigation and remedial efforts have not fully evaluated nor mitigated the threats that the regional PCE plume poses to human health or the environment,” said a 2022 report by AECOM, an environmental consultant hired by the water board to investigate the pollution. “The regional PCE plume continues to pose a potential threat to human health from direct exposure to PCE through ingestion of contaminated groundwater and from the migration of volatilized PCE in soil gas or shallow groundwater into indoor air.” 

Officials from the regional water board said that fully cleaning the groundwater and soil is tough, thanks to a lack of funding and because Tahoe’s snowy winters cause the ground to freeze.

Efforts conducted over the past two decades at the dry cleaners in South Lake Tahoe include using a soil vapor extraction system to essentially pump the contaminated air in the soil out and clean it. There has also been excavation work done to remove the contaminated soil and dispose of it, according to Grey. 

Also during that time some of the contaminated water has been pumped out, cleaned and released to feed purified water into the aquifer, Grey said. 

Additionally, the local water purveyor has discontinued the use of some of its wells with high levels of PCE contamination. Two wells still in operation have treatment systems in place to ensure residents do not receive polluted water, according to Grey.

“We’re taking this issue very seriously and have been working diligently on this for a long time, because of the threat to human health, which is our utmost priority,” said Ben Letton, assistant executive officer at the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board. 

SMALL BUSINESSES CAN’T AFFORD CLEANUP COSTS 

Similar, decades-long PCE plume investigations and cleanup efforts have been occurring in locations across the state. 

Dry cleaning business owners never intended to pollute, said Ray Rangwala, owner of Esteem Cleaners in Pasadena and a member of the Southern California Cleaners Association. 

But in an industry where harsh chemicals are used and no training is required, it’s no surprise that the state now finds itself facing such a pollution catastrophe, he said. 

And it’s a catastrophe that’s helping to wipe out the dry cleaning industry. 

Many dry cleaning businesses in California are barely holding on as their clientele dwindles. 

A shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic obliterated profits, and many dry cleaners have seen sales drop more than 50% with little rebound since the end of lockdowns. 

That, coupled with multi-million-dollar PCE cleanups, is ripping away the American dream immigrants such as Rangwala thought they’d earn by establishing a business in the United States. 

“If it hasn’t exploded yet, dry cleaners are sitting on ticking time bombs of this pollution they had no idea they were creating,” he said. “And there’s barely anyone there to help you survive the explosion.”

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Exclusive: How pollution from dry cleaners left California sitting on cancer-linked ‘time bombs’ appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two Texas companies have resolved Clean Air Act violations with the Environmental Protection Agency by agreeing to reduce emissions of planet-warming methane and other harmful pollutants wafting from the nation’s largest oil and gas producing region.

EPA announced Monday that Matador Production Company has agreed to pay $6.2 million in fines and mitigation measures related to 239 oil and gas well pads in New Mexico. Permian Resources Operating agreed earlier this month to pay $610,000 and make improvements to its equipment to settle environmental violations.

The enforcement actions came after EPA flew a helicopter equipped with a special infrared camera that can detect emissions of hydrocarbon vapors that are invisible to the naked eye.

EPA announced a new round of overflights in August, four days after publication of an investigation by The Associated Press that showed 533 oil and gas facilities in the region are emitting excessive amounts of methane and named the companies most responsible.

Colorless and odorless, methane makes up about 95 percent of natural gas and a potent greenhouse pollutant that traps 83 times more heat in the atmosphere over a 20 year period than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide.

The AP used 2021 data from the group Carbon Mapper to document massive amounts of methane venting into the atmosphere from “super emitters” across the Permian Basin, a 250-mile-wide bone-dry expanse along the Texas-New Mexico border.

A partnership of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and academic researchers, Carbon Mapper used an airplane carrying an infrared spectrometer to detect and quantify the unique chemical fingerprint of methane in the atmosphere. Hundreds of sites were shown persistently spewing the gas across multiple overflights.

EPA has said the timing of its 2022 overflights was not related to AP’s story and that similar aerial surveillance had been conducted in years past. The federal complaint filed against Matador said unlawful emissions were observed in 2019, while Permian Resources was cited for evidence collected during overflights in 2020.

EPA spokesman Timothy Carroll said federal regulators have initiated additional enforcement actions based on the agency’s 2022 flyover. He declined to provide the number of additional companies currently facing potential sanctions, citing the ongoing investigations.

Methane emissions in themselves are not illegal under current federal law, but the Clean Air Act does regulate other pollutants also contained in the gasses emitted during fossil fuel production, such as volatile organic compounds that contribute to health problems including asthma, lung infections, bronchitis and cancer.

“Air quality in the Permian Basin is at risk of not meeting national standards,” said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “We will continue to work with the State of New Mexico to ensure that oil and gas production operations are operating within the law to improve air quality and public health in surrounding communities.”

EPA said its settlement with Matador will result in a reduction of more than 16,000 tons of air pollutants that are harmful to human health. There will be additional reduction in emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases equal to about 31,000 tons of carbon dioxide — equal to taking more than 6,000 gasoline-powered vehicles off the road for one year.

Emails and a voicemail seeking comment from Matador Resources Company, the Dallas-based corporate parent of Matador Production Company, received no response.

Emails to Permian Resources, based in Midland, Texas, also received no response. The voicemail for a phone number at the company listed for media inquires was not accepting new messages on Tuesday.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post EPA cites 2 oil and gas firms over Permian Basin pollution appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

America needs to rethink and reduce the way it generates plastics because so much of the material is littering the oceans and other waters, the National Academy of Sciences says in a new report.

The United States, the world’s top plastics waste producer, generates more than 46 million tons (42 million metric tons) a year, and about 2.2 billion pounds (1 million metric tons) ends up in the world’s oceans, according to the academy’s report.

If the current rise in plastics pollution continues, the world by 2030 will be putting 58.4 million tons (53 million metric tons) into the oceans each year, or about half the weight of the fish caught in seas, the report said.

Recycling and proper disposal alone aren’t enough and can’t handle the problem, so the “United States should substantially reduce solid waste generation (absolute and per person) to reduce plastic waste in the environment,” said the report by the independent body of scientists set up by President Abraham Lincoln to advise the federal government on big research issues.

The plastics issue can’t be solved unless the country makes less plastic, designs it differently, keeps better track of it and cleans up more waste, and “that’s why our number one recommendation is to reduce solid waste generation,” said report chair Margaret Spring, chief conservation and science officer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

“We suggest that one way to reduce plastic waste would be to make less plastic,” said oceanographer Kara Lavender Law, a report co-author who has conducted numerous studies about plastic waste. “Recycling cannot manage the vast majority of the plastic waste that we generate.”

The panel provided a menu of potential ways to fix the plastics problem, starting with “national goals and strategies to cap or reduce virgin plastic production.”

Virgin plastic is plastic that starts from feedstock that hasn’t been used — namely, non-recycled material. The problem, the report said, is that “virgin plastic prices are artificially low due to fossil fuel subsidies, therefore virgin plastics are more profitable to produce” — and U.S. manufacturing of them continues to increase.

“More than 90% of plastics are made from virgin fossil feedstocks, which utilizes roughly 6% of global oil consumption,” the report said. And this makes virgin plastic a climate issue as well as a pollution problem, said study co-author Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia researcher who focuses on waste issues.

While recycling “is technically possible for some plastics, little plastic waste is recycled in the United States,” the report said, noting that materials put in plastics to change hardness or color make them too complex to recycle cheaply, compared to making new virgin plastic.

“One of the major barriers for recycling is the economics of virgin plastic and subsidization of the fossil fuel industry,” Spring said.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents plastics manufacturers, lauded most of the academy’s report, but it blasted the idea of limiting plastics production.

“This is misguided and would lead to supply chain disruptions, economic and inflationary pressure on already hurt consumers and worse environmental outcomes, particularly related to climate change,” American Chemistry Council Vice President Joshua Baca said in a statement. The organization, which touted $7.5 billion in advanced recycling projects since 2017, called for a study on greenhouse gas implications of raw materials used in packaging and plastic products.

The report’s figures and recommendations make sense and are grounded in science, said Australian scientist Denise Hardesty who studies the plastics waste issue but wasn’t part of the U.S. report.

“We don’t want to keep doing beach clean-ups for generations,” Hardesty said in an email. “Without a systems change, those (plastic waste) accumulating areas will continue — and will grow.”

The issue is important because plastics cause “devastating impacts on ocean health and marine wildlife,” the report said.

Fish, marine mammals and seabirds get tangled in plastics or eat them, get sick and frequently die, the report said. Looking at hundreds of studies, the report said of 914 marine species examined, 701 had problems with ingesting plastic and 354 of them got tangled in plastics.

And DNA studies show that some plastics — especially those exposed to wastewater — contain human and wildlife viruses and bacteria that can spread disease, the report said.

Plastic pollution is not just an ocean problem, but it’s a problem in rivers, lakes and on land, Spring said, adding that the Great Lakes probably have a higher percentage of plastic pollution than the seas.

Researchers have been studying the issue for years but can’t really say what percentage of the plastics produced by the U.S. ends up in the water because there are no monitoring and reporting requirements — and there should be, Law said.

The U.S. makes and exports plastics as well as imports it so the problem is global, the authors said.

“The United States produces the material, imports it, exports it, we all use it, we all dispose of it,” Law said. “Being the major offender, we also have this opportunity” to fix the problem.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Science report: US should make less plastic to save oceans appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — The company that operates the pipeline suspected in one of California’s largest oil spills has been cited 72 times for safety and environmental violations that were severe enough that drilling had to be curtailed or stopped to fix the problem, regulatory records show.

In all, Beta Operating Co. has been cited 125 times since 1980, according to a database from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the federal agency that regulates the offshore oil and gas industry. The online database provides only the total number of violations, not the details for each incident.

The company was fined a total of $85,000 for three incidents. Two were from 2014, when a worker who was not wearing proper protective equipment was shocked with 98,000 volts of electricity, and a separate incident when crude oil was released through a boom where a safety device had been improperly bypassed.

Beta, which is a subsidiary of Houston-based Amplify Energy, is under scrutiny after a suspected leak in an underwater pipeline sent 126,000 gallons (572,807 liters) of heavy crude into the ocean waters, fouling the sands of famed Huntington Beach and other coastal communities. The spill could keep beaches closed for weeks or longer.

Environmentalists had feared the oil might devastate birds and marine life in the area. But Michael Ziccardi, a veterinarian and director of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network, said only four oily birds had been found so far. One suffered chronic injuries and had to be euthanized, he said.

“It’s much better than we had feared,” he said at a news conference Monday.

Ziccardi said he’s “cautiously optimistic,” but it’s too soon to know the extent of the spill’s effect on wildlife. In other offshore oil spills, the largest number of oiled birds have been collected two to five days after the incident, he said.

Amplify operates three oil platforms about 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) off the coast of California, all installed between 1980 and 1984. The company also operates a 16-inch pipeline that carries oil from a processing platform to an onshore storage facility in Long Beach. The company has said the oil appears to be coming from a rupture in that pipeline about 4 miles (6.44 kilometers) from the platform.

Before the spill, Amplify had high hopes for the Beta oil field and was pouring millions of dollars into upgrades and new “side track” projects that would tap into oil by drilling laterally.

“We have the opportunity to keep going for as long as we want,” Amplify CEO Martyn Willsher said in an August conference call with investors. He added there was capacity “up to 20,000 barrels a day.”

Investors shared Willsher’s optimism, sending the company’s stock up more than sevenfold since the beginning of the year to $5.75 at the close of trading on Friday. The stock plunged more than 40% in morning trading Monday.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and emerged a few months later. It had been using cash generated by the Beta field and others in Oklahoma and Texas to pay down $235 million in debt.

Some residents, business owners and environmentalists questioned whether authorities reacted quickly enough to contain the spill. People who live and work in the area said they noticed an oil sheen and a heavy petroleum smell Friday evening.

Booms were deployed on the ocean surface Sunday to try to contain the oil while divers sought to determine where and why the leak occurred. On land, there was a race to find animals harmed by the oil and to keep the spill from harming any more sensitive marshland.

But it was not until Saturday afternoon that the Coast Guard said an oil slick had been spotted and a unified command established to respond. And it took until Saturday night for the company to shut down the pipeline.

Rick Torgerson, owner of Blue Star Yacht Charter, said on Friday evening “people were emailing, and the neighbors were asking, ‘Do you smell that?’” By Saturday morning, boats were returning to the marina with their hulls covered in oil, he said.

Garry Brown, president of the environmental group Orange County Coastkeeper, decried a lack of initial coordination among the Coast Guard and local officials in dealing with the spreading oil slick.

“By the time it comes to the beach, it’s done tremendous damage. Our frustration is, it could have been averted if there was a quick response,” said Brown, who lives in Huntington Beach.

Some of the oil washed up on the shores of Orange County. The city and state beaches at Huntington Beach were closed, and late Sunday the city of Laguna Beach, just to the south, said its beaches also were closed.

Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr said the beaches of the community nicknamed “Surf City” could remain closed for weeks or even months. The oil created a miles-wide sheen in the ocean and washed ashore in sticky black globules.

“In a year that has been filled with incredibly challenging issues, this oil spill constitutes one of the most devastating situations that our community has dealt with in decades,” Carr said. “We are doing everything in our power to protect the health and safety of our residents, our visitors and our natural habitats.”

Amplify CEO Martyn Willsher said the pipeline and the company’s three platforms were shut down Saturday night. The 17.5-mile (28.16-kilometer) pipeline that is 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) below the surface was suctioned out so no more oil would spill while the location of the leak was being investigated.

Crews led by the Coast Guard-deployed skimmers laid some 3,700 feet (1,128 meters) of floating barriers known as booms to try to stop more oil from seeping into areas including Talbert Marsh, a 25-acre (10-hectare) wetland officials said.

The oil will likely continue to wash up on the shore for several days and could affect Newport Beach and other nearby communities, officials said.

The spill comes three decades after a massive oil leak hit the same stretch of Orange County coast. On Feb. 7, 1990, the oil tanker American Trader ran over its anchor off Huntington Beach, spilling nearly 417,000 gallons (1.6 million liters) of crude. Fish and about 3,400 birds were killed.

In 2015, a ruptured pipeline north of Santa Barbara sent 143,000 gallons (541,313 liters) of crude oil gushing onto Refugio State Beach.

The area affected by the latest spill is home to threatened and endangered species, including a plump shorebird called the snowy plover, the California least tern and humpback whales.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Company suspected in oil spill had dozens of violations appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

SANDY HOOK, N.J. (AP) — To the usual list of foul trash left behind or washed up on beaches around the world, add these: masks and gloves used by people to avoid the coronavirus and then discarded on the sand.

In the past year, volunteers picking up trash on beaches from the Jersey Shore to California, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong have been finding discarded personal protective equipment.

The latest example came Wednesday when New Jersey’s Clean Ocean Action environmental group released its annual tally of trash plucked from the state’s shorelines. In addition to the plastics, cigarette butts and food wrappers that sully the sand each year, the group’s volunteers removed 1,113 masks and other pieces of virus-related protective gear from New Jersey beaches last fall.

“Used correctly PPE saves lives; disposed of incorrectly it kills marine life,” said Cindy Zipf, the group’s executive director. “PPE litter is a gross result of the pandemic, and 100% avoidable. Use PPE properly, then dispose of it properly in a trash can. It’s not hard and it’s the least we can do for this marvel of a planet we all live on, not to mention ourselves.”

Discarded masks and gloves started showing up on beaches not long after the virus began circulating widely last year, and continued to appear as quarantine-weary people sought an escape at the beach.

In the second half of 2020, more than 107,000 items of PPE were collected by volunteers around the world according to the Ocean Conservancy group — a figure its members believe is a vast undercount of the year’s true totals.

“Once in the environment, disposable PPE act like any other single-use plastic, likely never breaking down but rather breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces and persisting indefinitely,” said Nicholas Mallos, senior director of the Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Free Seas program. “In fact, a recent study found that a single disposable mask can shed up to 173,000 microfibers — tiny plastic fibers — in a single day.

“What this means is that the damage is cumulative, adding up over time to the massive amount of plastics already entering our ocean each year,” he said. “PPE has been vital in protecting human health, but the resulting pollution has also exposed that our waste systems are not equipped to handle crises like this.”

In Northern California, the Pacific Beach Coalition recently noticed a dramatic increase in discarded PPE on beaches in and around the city of Pacifica, south of San Francisco. A clean-up day in San Diego netted 413 latex gloves and more than 700 single-use surgical masks.

In Scotland, discarded PPE was found on nearly a quarter of the beaches cleaned last fall by the Marine Conservation Society.

And masks began showing up on Hong Kong beaches in March 2020, in the early days of the pandemic.

Conservationists have reported sea birds becoming entangled in the ear straps of face masks, and they worry that marine life could eat masks or gloves, mistaking it for food, and suffer serious or fatal consequences.

Beyond the PPE, Clean Ocean Action’s beach sweeps also came up with some unusual items, including a back scrubber; a home pregnancy test (results unknown); a bong; a check for $81; a foam tombstone; a parking ticket; a New Orleans Saints flag; eight pumpkins; and a wooden pig’s head.

The group’s spring 2021 beach sweeps will be held April 17 at locations up and down the Jersey Shore.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Discarded masks litter beaches worldwide, threaten sea life appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

PACIFICA, Calif. (AP) — Disposable masks, gloves and other types of personal protective equipment are safeguarding untold lives during the coronavirus pandemic. They’re also creating a worldwide pollution problem, littering streets and sending an influx of harmful plastic and other waste into landfills, sewage systems and oceans.

In Northern California, environmental groups are tracking the issue along the coast — and trying to do something about it.

The Pacific Beach Coalition recently noticed a dramatic increase in discarded PPE on beaches in and around the city of Pacifica, south of San Francisco, where it’s been doing monthly cleanups for nearly 25 years.

Volunteers record what they pick up to gauge what might end up in the ocean. Until 2020, the litter was mostly cigarette butts and food wrappers.

“What are we going to do? We got masks. We got gloves. We got all those hand wipes, the sani wipes. They’re everywhere. They’re in my neighborhood, in my streets. What can we do?” asked Lynn Adams, the coalition’s president.

The group and others are calling attention to the issue, saying what’s recorded is likely only a fraction of the personal protective equipment hitting beaches and oceans.

Larger mammals can ingest PPE, and plastic from the items can disrupt the ocean’s food chains. “They’re all made of plastic,” Adams said.

A report last year by the advocacy group OceansAsia found nearly 1.6 billion masks would flood oceans in 2020 alone, based on global production estimates and other factors. OceansAsia said masks could take as long as 450 years to break down.

The Marine Mammal Center, a conservation group that rescues and rehabilitates mammals, conducts research and provides education, said animals can get trapped in discarded PPE, or mistake it for food.

“Obviously, PPE is critical right now, but we know that with increased amounts of plastic and a lot of this stuff getting out into the ocean, it can be a really big threat to marine mammals and all marine life,” said the center’s conservation educator, Adam Ratner.

One small thing Ratner suggests is cutting the loops before discarding a mask, which can help prevent animals from getting tangled in them.

Sophia Woehl was among those volunteering in the cleanup at a beach in Pacifica last week.

“We want to keep ourselves safe, but we also want to keep the rest of the environment safe, too, and we’re not doing that right now with just leaving them on the ground,” she said.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Masks and gloves are saving lives — and causing pollution appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Let’s see if I have a grip on saving the environment. Due to plastic bags polluting the environment and causing damage to sea life, we Californians have to take our own bags to stores selling food. If you forget your bags when shopping at a food market you may purchase a bag for a dime. But that bag is made of what? PLASTIC! But if you purchase products from merchants not selling food, your purchases are put in a plastic bag. DUH!

Dine in restaurants can no longer automatically give you a plastic straw because they, too, are damaging the sea life and polluting the environment. But drive-through restaurants can still provide you with a plastic straw. Now which eating out scenario is most likely not to dispose of its drink cup and straw properly? The drive-through, right? So what’s the point here?

Add in the disposal of cigarette butts!

BUT ——The homeless are not contributing to polluting the environment? What about the attracting and breeding of rodents as in RATS? No pollution or danger to have human feces and urine on streets? None whatsoever in hypodermic needles laying in streets? Needles not disposed of properly?

The worse legislation passed was the legislation of “POT” sales and usage. Marijuana is still a mind altering drug. Now some cities are offering safe places to shoot one’s self up with heroin or other injectable drugs. Is this not enabling drug use? Are those needles going to be disposed of properly?

Where is the fine line between plastic bags, plastic straws pollution versus human waste, hypodermic needles polluting the environment.

Just curious

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

Search: Saving the environment

The post Saving the environment appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.