Trump Leaves A Surprising Gift To The Planet On His Way Out. That Story And Other Headlines

H2O Radio

March 2, 2021

On Day One, Biden Rolls Back Trump’s Environmental Rollbacks

President Joe Biden wasted no time in moving to undo actions of his predecessor that he said failed to protect public health and the environment. On his first day, Biden took steps to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and revoked the permit for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

Biden ordered a sweeping review of more than 100 rules and regulations on water, air, public lands, endangered species, and global warming that were rolled back by the previous administration. The new president withdrew areas in the Arctic and Bering Sea from oil and gas drilling and ordered a proper assessment of development proposals. He will require that all federal projects factor in their impacts on climate change. Also in his first week, Biden announced the suspension of new oil and gas leasing and drilling permits for U.S. lands and waters, effective for 60 days. Biden ordered that the assessment of all federal projects factor in the impacts on climate change.

The president is also taking steps to rescind Trump’s limitation on the country’s waters that are covered by environmental protection laws; however, rewriting that rule—Waters of the U.S. or WOTUS—will take a long time. As one expert told the New York Times, the new administration will have to prepare all the scientific and economic analyses and get it right. They can’t just make the Trump rules go away.

Biden’s policies explicitly state that the administration will listen to science, and, among other things, ensure access to clean water and air and limit exposure to dangerous chemicals and pesticides, while holding polluters accountable.

In his first months, the president is expected to restore federal protections around at least two national monuments in Utah—Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. Trump opened nearly two million acres around those monuments to mining, logging, and drilling.

Biden is focused on restoring Obama-era environmental policies—and in some cases going further. For example, efficiency standards for appliances will be reinstated and his administration will work with automakers to improve vehicle fuel economy. The New York Times reports it could take two to three years or even longer to put many of Biden’s rules into place.

Wave Energy Project Approved Day Before Inauguration

A day before Trump left office, his administration made a surprising gift to renewable energy—a green light to deploy technology that generates power from ocean waves. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced that Oregon State University will operate PacWave South, the first-ever test site in the U.S. that will deploy marine hydrokinetic technology to harness energy from ocean waves, tides, and currents, and convert it into electricity.

The site off the coast of Newport, Oregon, will include four mooring berths to capture wave energy both above and below the surface and transfer the power to the grid onshore. At maximum capacity, the project could generate enough power for 20,000 homes. According to the Energy Information Administration, waves off the coast of the U.S. could supply two-thirds of all the electricity the country produced in 2019.

The technologies to produce power from waves work in various ways. Some are chambered devices partly in the water with an underwater opening toward the direction waves come from. When waves move into them, they push the water upward, resulting in an air pressure change that produces electricity. Other devices lie on the ocean floor, and when waves pass over them, they move similar to the capture and release of energy in a spring, but in this case, generating electricity.

Burke Hales, a professor at Oregon State, said that the project, the only one in North America, will be a proving ground for the future of wave energy.

New Report Says Ageing Dams Are an Emerging Global Risk

Tens of thousands of dams across the world are reaching the limits of their lifespans, according to a new study from United Nations University. The study warns that many will need maintenance and some will need to be decommissioned to avoid overtopping, leaks, and even failures.

Many dams were designed to be in service for only 50 to 100 years, yet thousands are older. Also, the majority were built before the impacts from global warming, such as extreme weather and changing rainfall patterns, were known. Intense storms can cause upstream erosion and send large amounts of sand and silt into reservoirs, not only reducing their capacity to store water during drought but increasing the risk of flooding.

The Guardian reports that dam failures risk the lives of people living downstream, but a more likely threat is the loss of electricity generation from hydropower, especially if the infrastructure is not maintained to cope with climate change.

As of last year, more than 85 percent of large dams in the U.S. were operating at or beyond their life expectancy, and according to the report, the estimated cost of refurbishing them is about $64 billion.

To learn more about this serious issue, listen to H2O Radio’s story: Damned from the Start—Many U.S. Reservoirs Could Be Rendered Useless—And That Was Part of the Plan.

Pablo Escobar’s Legacy—"Cocaine Hippos"

Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, once the seventh-richest person in the world, lived large off his cocaine empire, collecting luxury cars, planes, and even submarines. But one of his favorite things to buy with his ill-gotten gains were exotic animals for his private zoo, including four hippos that he kept at his estate outside of Medellín.

When he was shot dead in 1993, the Colombian government seized his property and most of the animals were either euthanized or sent to zoos. But four of his so-called “cocaine hippos” escaped and have since become a herd of nearly 100, which are causing so much damage to the environment, scientists are calling them “the largest invasive animals in the world”.

A new study out this month says the hippo population could swell to 1,500 by 2040 and cause irreversible ecological damage through their urine, which is toxic to wildlife, and feces, which fuel algal blooms in the Magdalena River Basin—a key source of water for drinking and agriculture in the region. Furthermore, because the animals wallow in waterways as they look for food, they’re altering habitats for birds and fish.

Hippos are very aggressive, so to prevent an ecological catastrophe and protect the public, the researchers are urging officials to consider culling the creatures. But that’s easier said than done. Previous efforts to reduce the herd have been met with firm resistance by locals, who see the animals as unofficial mascots and sell hippo jewelry and T-shirts. Sterilizing the hippos has proven to be difficult and ineffective, so for now the best strategy is to try to convince the public of the urgency of dealing with the invaders—before it’s too late.

California's Ban on Gillnets Served Its "Porpoise"

There’s some good news about marine ecosystems. Populations of harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) have dramatically rebounded in Northern California as a result of the state banning the use of gillnets in the 1990s. Porpoises are smaller and shyer than their cousins the dolphins, and according to new research from NOAA, their return to the California coast is the first documented example of the species rebounding—and suggests that eliminating nets can allow other marine mammals to recover too.

Gillnets are walls of netting that are either anchored or drift, and trap fish when they try to swim through. When bycatch or unintended targets like harbor porpoises get entangled, they suffocate.

Harbor porpoises were particularly vulnerable to nets along the California coast meant to catch white sea bass and halibut because they frequent the same shallow waters. Since the ban on gillnets, harbor porpoise populations have doubled from Morro Bay to the Sonoma Coast, and the findings suggest that the nets had taken a greater toll on harbor porpoise than was previously realized.

H2O Radio’s goal is to help their audience become invested and knowledgeable caretakers of our environment and water supply by cutting through noise, opinion, and ideological narrative to present facts and truth with a clear, strong signal. Noting the urgent situation of climate change there is little time to waste.