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Democrats want travel industry to reduce emissions in exchange for coronavirus bailout

by Laurind2964 Posted on March 19, 2020

As you read this, U.S. lawmakers are rushing to push a third coronavirus aid package through Congress to help alleviate the economic burden the pandemic has placed on people and industry. (The first, passed two weeks ago, was an $8 billion package that boosted funding for COVID-19 testing, and the second round of funding, signed Wednesday night, was aimed at providing paid family and sick leave to affected Americans.) Democrats want the new package to include measures that will reduce emissions from major polluters.

In a letter to the majority and minority leadership of both houses in Congress on Wednesday, eight Democratic senators, including former presidential candidate Cory Booker of New Jersey, asked Congress to include stricter environmental requirements for industries asking for bailouts from the economic fallout of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Specifically, the senators highlighted the aviation and cruise industries, which are major contributors of greenhouse gas emissions — the former account for 2.5 percent of total carbon dioxide emissions globally, and the latter burns heavy fuel oil (“one of the dirtiest fuels,” the letter points out). The aviation industry has asked Congress for $50 billion in aid, more than three times the amount it received in the aftermath of 9/11.

“If we give the airline and cruise industries assistance without requiring them to be better environmental stewards,” the senators wrote, “we would miss a major opportunity to combat climate change and ocean dumping.” In addition to Booker, the letter’s signatories were Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Tina Smith of Minnesota, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

On Twitter, Whitehouse made his point more forcefully.

His colleague Markey, co-author of the Green New Deal resolution introduced in the Senate and House last February, agreed.

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely these Democrats have the leverage to compel the Republican-controlled Senate and President Trump to enforce stricter environmental regulations in exchange for coronavirus aid. And it’s not clear that their colleagues in the Senate and House have the bandwidth to tackle both coronavirus and climate change at the moment under such a tight deadline. But with airlines and cruise companies desperate for a bailout, there may never be a better time to make them change their polluting ways.

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Judge writes blistering dissent as kids’ climate lawsuit gets tossed

by mackenziepsv Posted on January 17, 2020

Nowadays, it’s not unusual to see young folks publicly protesting climate change. But back in 2015, long before Greta Thunberg set up shop on the steps of the Swedish Parliament and inspired millions to take to the streets, 21 kids sued the United States to try to force the government to do something about climate change. They argued that the government’s inaction was putting their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at risk. That case, Juliana v. United States, paved the way for more climate-themed lawsuits to be filed against governments and oil companies around the world.

On Friday, after five long years of wins, setbacks, and procedural delay, the kids finally got their answer: No.

The 9th Circuit dismissed the case on the grounds that the courts don’t have the power to order the kind of emissions reduction plan sought by the plaintiffs, who were demanding that the government limit atmospheric warming to 1 degree C — a whole half-degree cooler than the target called for by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Any plan to reduce emissions, the panel of three judges wrote in a 32-page opinion, would require the executive and legislative branches to come up with a range of complicated policies and vote on them. As such, the decision reads, “the panel reluctantly concluded that the plaintiff’s case must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large.” The issue here, of course, is that the leadership of one of the United States’ two major political parties denies the existence of climate change, and Congress’ most recent climate bill — the first one in a decade — just hit the dust in the Senate. Regardless, the case will not go to trial.

One judge wasn’t happy about that. In a searing dissent, District Judge Josephine Staton lacerated the U.S. government and said that the young people do have standing.

In these proceedings, the government accepts as fact that the United States has reached a tipping point crying out for a concerted response — yet presses ahead toward calamity. It is as if an asteroid were barreling toward the Earth and the government decided to shut down our only defenses. Seeking to quash this suit, the government bluntly insists that it has the absolute and unreviewable power to destroy the Nation.

The decision is a blow to the youth plaintiffs, many of whom have put their lives on hold for years in order to be available for depositions and testimonies. But winning the case wasn’t their only priority. When Grist interviewed one plaintiff, Aji Piper, in 2018, he said his reasons for suing the government are chiefly moral.

“It’s not about the winning,” he said. “It’s doing it because it’s the right thing to do.” At least the kids know they tried their best to protect Earth from the asteroid. And their legal counsel isn’t giving up yet. “We will be asking the full Ninth Circuit to review the determination that federal courts can do nothing to address an admitted constitutional violation,” Andrea Rodgers, the plaintiffs’ co-counsel, said in a statement.

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Judge writes blistering dissent as kids’ climate lawsuit gets tossed

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The pope might make destroying the earth a sin. Will Catholics listen?

by Ezekiel2332 Posted on November 22, 2019

Pope Francis is not your average pope. He’s weighed in on prison reform and women’s rights, and he wrote a whole encyclical on climate change in 2015. On Friday, at the 20th World Congress of the International Association of Penal Law, Francis waded into the climate change debate again with an unusual idea: perhaps environmental destruction should be classified as an official sin.

During his speech, Francis said he was thinking about adding “ecological sin against the common home” to the catechism, the book that summarizes Catholic belief. “It is a sin against future generations and is manifested in the acts and habits of pollution and destruction of the harmony of the environment,” he said.

Some theology experts think the pope’s interest in the environment is a reflection of his social justice beliefs. “Climate change will impact the poor and marginalized first and worst across the world who have the least capacity to adapt or to recover from disasters,” Erin Lothes Biviano, associate professor of theology at the College of St. Elizabeth, told E&E News. “It’s viewed not as an environmental problem, but an environmental and social problem.”

But will Catholics accept the idea that destroying the environment is an offense against God? The pope’s past efforts to integrate environmental stewardship into the Catholic faith haven’t always convinced his flock. A survey conducted a year after he published his climate-themed encyclical found that the call to action backfired among conservative Americans. Right-leaning Americans were less worried about rising temperatures after hearing his message. Only 22.5 percent of Americans who had even heard of the encyclical expressed concern over climate change. And the Pope actually lost some credibility with conservative Catholics.

Francis might not be the climate influencer advocates hoped he’d be. But that doesn’t necessarily mean all Catholics are ignoring his message. Emma Frances Bloomfield, an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Las Vegas and the author of a book called Communication Strategies for Engaging Climate Skeptics, says it all depends on whether people believe the environment is related to faith.

Folks who see environmental conservation and religion as two entirely separate spheres will likely ignore Francis’ emphasis on the subject. But for religious people who are already inclined to think the two go together, an authority figure like the pope pushing for stewardship might be highly effective. “The idea of casting environmental damage as an ecological sin really amplifies how important the pope and Catholics think environmental damage is,” she said. “If Pope Francis really solidifies it as part of the catechism it can encourage Christians who are uncertain about the environment to consider it more strongly.”

In other words, preaching to the choir may actually be useful … when the pope does it.

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The pope might make destroying the earth a sin. Will Catholics listen?

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Wait — Republicans used to like the Green New Deal?

by fhernandez16671977 Posted on November 22, 2019

Most Republicans once liked the Green New Deal. And no, you’re not reading climate fiction. This was reality just a year ago.

Some 64 percent of Republican voters initially supported the package of climate and green jobs policies, according to a poll from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. This was in December of last year, when those polled weren’t familiar with the name “Green New Deal.” Some 82 percent of them hadn’t even heard the phrase, let alone any nonsense about banning hamburgers. (For the record, that’s not part of the resolution introduced in Congress.)

Bipartisan support for the policy was short-lived, thanks in large part to a TV network that rhymes with “Lox Blues.” A new study published in Nature Climate Change found that the more Republicans heard about the Green New Deal, the less they liked it. Among those who watched Fox News more than once a week, support for the GND plunged from 54 percent in early December to 22 percent by early April. In other words, the majority of Republican voters supported what was in the package then changed their minds once they heard Fox’s talking heads seize on the ambitious scope of the program and trash it. On Tucker Carlson’s show, it was rebranded as the Green New Mess, as well as an excuse to usher in socialism.

The resolution was introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York City and Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts in February, then shot down by the Senate in March. After its introduction in Congress, the Green New Deal was covered by Fox more frequently than other networks, and some of that coverage included straight-up lies. Analysis from media watchdog Media Matters found that more than half of Fox’s segments on the Green New Deal in mid-February didn’t even bring up climate change. Most of the discussion centered on political wins or losses rather than on how the resolution might work or what problems it would address.

By April, only 4 percent of Republicans who had heard a lot about the resolution backed it, compared to 96 percent of Democrats. Fast forward to now, and it’s hard to believe that the idea — and before that, the political will to take on climate change more generally — ever had bipartisan support.

The environment wasn’t always so polarizing. President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, after all. But over recent decades, Republicans and Democrats have been driven further and further apart from each other on not just political opinions but on basic facts. That’s the case with climate change along with immigration, gun laws, and other issues. The so-called “Fox News effect” is a part of that story.

The good news? Younger Republicans now sound nearly identical to Democrats when it comes to a federal carbon tax, further restrictions on methane emissions, and a national renewable energy standard, according to a recent survey from Ipsos and Newsy. (Label them as part of the Green New Deal and results may vary.) The surge of environmental concern among young conservatives could bring big changes to the GOP in the years ahead.

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Wait — Republicans used to like the Green New Deal?

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What critics of Bernie Sanders’ climate plan are missing

by JillFriedrbt Posted on November 15, 2019

Bernie Sander’s $16 trillion climate plan, which he calls the Green New Deal, would transition the electricity and transportation sectors to renewable energy by 2030, allegedly create 240,000 jobs a year, and essentially nationalize the nation’s power sector. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and legions of climate activists have thrown their support behind the proposal, arguing the Vermont Senator is the only candidate in the primary whose climate ambitions are commensurate with the scale of the crisis. What’s not to love?

A lot, according to a bunch of climate scientists and energy economists interviewed by New York Times reporter Lisa Friedman. In a nutshell, those experts say the plan is “technically impractical, politically unfeasible, and possibly ineffective.” Friedman’s sources argue that Sanders’ resolute stance against building new nuclear projects would kneecap his ability to make the leap from fossil fuels to wind and solar. Then there’s the fact that many of the exciting projects he has planned for the American people, like high-speed rail and mass transit, require CO2-intensive resources to build.

The paper of record isn’t the first to question Sanders’ climate plan. “I find it very difficult to imagine that we can reach a completely decarbonized electricity and transport system by 2030, especially if we’re limiting our options exclusively to wind and solar, as well as geothermal,” Nader Sobhani, a climate policy associate at the think tank Niskanen Center, told InsideClimate News. In the Washington Post, columnist David Drehle wrote, “The wall is child’s play compared with the risible fantasy that Sanders has rolled out in lieu of an actual climate change strategy.”

Obviously, experts and pundits can and should criticize a policy proposal on its merits. But what Sanders’ critics miss is that even if it’s impractical or unfeasible, his Green New Deal still serves a political purpose. The plan moves the Overton window, the range of political ideas that the public considers acceptable or mainstream, several notches to the left.

In fact, Sanders has already moved the Overton window on climate. In 2016, Sander’s climate strategy centered around a carbon tax, an idea that his rival, Hilary Clinton, couldn’t even get behind. In 2019, a carbon tax is barely on the menu, not because it’s too ambitious, but because it’s not ambitious enough. The extraordinary evolution of our climate discourse over the past couple of years is, in part, thanks to the groundwork Sanders laid in 2016. (It’s also thanks to Green New Deal champion Ocasio-Cortez, who credits Sanders for inspiring her to run for Congress.)

Sanders has long been adept at shifting the Overton Window. In 2016, Clinton called talk of a single-payer system “a theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass.” Now, more than half of the crowded Democratic field supports some version of it. That’s in large part because Sanders started beating the Medicare-for-All drum on a national stage during his 2016 presidential run. Sanders has also influenced the national conversation around immigration, publicly funded higher education, and, yes, capitalism itself.

His $16 trillion climate plan may not be entirely feasible, but pulling his most serious competitors further left has always been well within Sanders’ grasp. At the end of the day, that may be the most indelible mark Sanders leaves on the 2020 race.

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What critics of Bernie Sanders’ climate plan are missing

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Getting to Green: Saving Nature: A Bipartisan Solution – Frederic C. Rich

by Myrna Posted on November 8, 2019

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Getting to Green: Saving Nature: A Bipartisan Solution

Frederic C. Rich

Genre: Nature

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: April 18, 2016

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


“Regardless of your place on the political spectrum, there is much to admire in this book, which reminds us that the stewardship of nature is an obligation shared by all Americans.” —U.S. Senator Angus S. King Jr. The Green movement in America has lost its way. Pew polling reveals that the environment is one of the two things about which Republicans and Democrats disagree most. Congress has not passed a landmark piece of environmental legislation for a quarter-century. As atmospheric CO2 continues its relentless climb, even environmental insiders have pronounced “the death of environmentalism.” In Getting to Green, Frederic C. Rich argues that meaningful progress on urgent environmental issues can be made only on a bipartisan basis. Rich reminds us of American conservation’s conservative roots and of the bipartisan political consensus that had Republican congressmen voting for, and Richard Nixon signing, the most important environmental legislation of the 1970s. He argues that faithfulness to conservative principles requires the GOP to support environmental protection, while at the same time he criticizes the Green movement for having drifted too far to the left and too often appearing hostile to business and economic growth. With a clear-eyed understanding of past failures and a realistic view of the future, Getting to Green argues that progress on environmental issues is within reach. The key is encouraging Greens and conservatives to work together in the space where their values overlap—what the book calls “Center Green.” Center Green takes as its model the hugely successful national land trust movement, which has retained vigorous bipartisan support. Rich’s program is pragmatic and non-ideological. It is rooted in the way America is, not in a utopian vision of what it could become. It measures policy not by whether it is the optimum solution but by the two-part test of whether it would make a meaningful contribution to an environmental problem and whether it is achievable politically. Application of the Center Green approach moves us away from some of the harmful orthodoxies of mainstream environmentalism and results in practical and actionable positions on climate change, energy policy, and other crucial issues. This is how we get to Green.

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Getting to Green: Saving Nature: A Bipartisan Solution – Frederic C. Rich

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11,000 scientists say that the ‘climate emergency’ is here

by ZacheryQVVR Posted on November 5, 2019

More than 11,000 scientists declared a climate emergency today in — where else — an article published in a scientific journal.

“Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any great existential threat and to ‘tell it like it is,’” begins the “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency,” published in BioScience. It continues, “On the basis of this obligation … we declare … clearly and unequivocally, that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.”

The declaration was co-written by William Ripple, a professor of ecology at Oregon State University and the founder of the environmental advocacy group Alliance of World Scientists, and undersigned by more than 11,000 scientists and climate experts.

These signatories aren’t the first to describe the present state of the climate as a crisis. Hundreds of governments of various sizes around the world, including New York City and the United Kingdom, have passed resolutions saying the same. This summer, some members of Congress proposed a resolution for the U.S. government to join the climate-emergency chorus.

This particular declaration is a little different, though — for one thing, it’s peer reviewed. It’s also the first time so many scientists have directly told the public that the current state of the climate constitutes a crisis, rather than letting their data speak for itself.

“Phrases like ‘climate change’ sound a little bit mild, in terms of how severe the problem is,” Ripple told Grist. “So, we wanted to publish language that is consistent with the data and the trends that we’re seeing.”

Ripple organized a similar initiative back in 2017, when he and 15,000 other scientists issued a “warning to humanity” about climate change (which was itself an homage to a climate warning written by a different group of scientists in 1992). But Ripple decided it was time to upgrade the warning to a declaration of emergency after talking to Representative Earl Blumenauer from Oregon, who introduced the resolution for Congress to declare a national climate emergency back in July.

“In my view, declaring a climate emergency should mostly be based on the data,” said Ripple. “These governmental bodies, they’ll look to the science to see if they are on solid ground before they pass these resolutions.”

Even though outright climate denialism is increasingly illegitimate in mainstream news, the debate over whether to use words like “catastrophe,” “emergency,” or “crisis” continues. So Ripple wanted politicians, activists, and the general public to know that the science supports urgency. He wrote the letter, which details the basic facts of climate change — how human impacts, like CO2 emissions and deforestation, have environmental consequences, like the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and global temperature rise — and sent it around to other scientists, who added their names to the message by the thousands.

But what exactly does it mean to declare a climate emergency? Sure, the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one, and advocates of climate emergency resolutions point out that acknowledging the severity of the problem posed by our warming planet is a prerequisite for action.

It’s easy to look skeptically at climate emergency resolutions, though, since they’re largely symbolic measures at a time when there are so many tangible actions that need to be taken — transitioning the energy sector from fossil fuels to renewable sources, say. Resolutions also usually (although not always) call for vague, nonbinding measures without legal mechanisms to hold governments accountable for meeting them.

Whether or not you think climate emergency resolutions are an effective tactic for inspiring more concrete actions, it’s a pretty big deal that so many scientists have decided it’s necessary to step out of their labs and into the political arena. If you didn’t believe our warming planet is in a state of emergency, just know that several thousand scientists want you to know otherwise.

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11,000 scientists say that the ‘climate emergency’ is here

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Climate change means wild weather. Does that include snowstorms?

by ShantaeOverlock Posted on October 2, 2019

If it seems like just last week that summer ended, you are correct — so why does the first day of October look like the dead of winter in the Northern Rockies? Over the weekend, Montana Governor Steve Bullock issued a state of emergency after an unusually intense “winter” storm dropped 48 inches of snow on some parts of the state.

This year has already included a slew of record-setting weather events in the Northern Hemisphere, all courtesy of climate change. Heatwaves across Europe and the Arctic made this the hottest summer ever recorded, the midwestern U.S. is still recovering from terrible floods, and we’re currently in the middle of an unusually intense hurricane season.

So where does Montana’s pre-Halloween winter wonderland fit into all that? If you’re reading this, you probably know that weather and climate are not the same thing, and extreme winter weather doesn’t refute the existence of climate change. (Seriously, y’all, it’s 2019 — don’t be that senator who brought a snowball into Congress to disprove global warming.)

But could the Montana storm have been caused or exacerbated by climate change? Yes. Meteorologists and atmospheric scientists caution that more research is required to know exactly how big a role climate change played in this weekend’s storm, specifically. But it’s possible, and even likely, that climate change contributed to, and intensified, the conditions that made a storm this big possible.

The first mechanism by which climate change could have affected the storm is pretty basic: Warming temperatures lead to evaporating water, which leads to a wetter atmosphere, which leads to more precipitation.

“[A]ll storms are influenced to some degree by climate change because the environment is warmer and moister than it used to be,” said Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Since weather events are determined by factors specific to each situation, Trenberth didn’t think it was accurate to say the storm’s strength was entirely due to climate change — however, “the potential for bigger snowfalls in spring and fall is one of the signatures of climate change.” (Heavy snowfall in Montana this early in the fall is unusual, but not entirely unprecedented — the first snow of the season in 1992 in Great Falls was on August 22.)

There might be another, slightly more convoluted way climate change is affecting the weather that basically boils down to this: Rising Arctic temperatures are messing with the jet stream.

Jet streams are currents of wind way up in the atmosphere (at the altitude planes fly, hence the name) flowing west to east along the boundaries between hot and cold air. There’s one above the northern U.S., and it’s a key player in determining a lot of the region’s weather.

Jennifer Francis, a scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, studies how Arctic warming affects the weather in the rest of the northern hemisphere. She said a “contorted jet-stream configuration” was “a less direct connection” between climate change the storm — “and much more controversial, but a topic of active research.”

It’s normal for jet streams to have some north-south fluctuation. But with the melting of cold-retaining sea ice, the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the hemisphere, which researchers like Francis think is making the jet stream slower-moving and wavier as the difference in temperature between the Arctic and land further south decreases.

Francis explained that “unusually warm ocean waters off the west coast and around Alaska” — the result of melting sea ice — helped caused the jet stream to dip so far south, setting up the conditions for this weekend’s wet, heavy storm.

“An early snowstorm like this could have occurred through random chance, but there’s no question (in my mind) that climate change has made it worse,” Francis said.

Scientists have long warned that climate change will bring more frequent, wetter, and slower-moving storms. If this weekend’s storm shows us anything, it’s that that doesn’t just mean hurricanes. “I’d say the dice are loaded in favor of more unusual weather events this winter,” said Francis, “but it’s hard to say who will be affected the most.”

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Climate change means wild weather. Does that include snowstorms?

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The climate legislation this Congress could realistically pass

by ReganGoodell Posted on September 27, 2019

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The climate legislation this Congress could realistically pass

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‘The next Flint,’ and America’s problem with lead in its water

by EbonyBirdsong1 Posted on August 19, 2019

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: A U.S. city is facing a public health crisis, after years of denying that it had a problem with lead in its drinking water supply. In 2016, that would have been a reference to Flint, Michigan. This week, it’s Newark, New Jersey, where city officials on Sunday resorted to handing out bottled water to affected residents.

Lead has long been recognized as a potent neurotoxin. The health effects of lead exposure in children include lowered IQ and increased risk of behavioral disorders. Exposed adults are more likely to develop a slew of health problems including nerve, kidney, and cardiovascular issues. Pregnant women and babies are especially vulnerable, as even low levels are associated with serious, irreversible damage to developing brains and nervous systems.

No amount of lead is considered “safe,” but the federal government has set a limit of 15 parts per billion in drinking water. At one point, tests in Flint revealed lead levels at over 100 ppb. In July, a test showed Newark water lead levels at 55 ppb. In both cases residents say the city’s denials and delays came at a cost to their wellbeing.

“The mayor keeps saying that this isn’t like Flint,” Newark resident Shakima Thomas told Grist way back in November. “It is the same as Flint in the way that they tried to cover it up. We were victimized by this administration. They gamble with our health. They put politics first before justice.”

And that pattern appears to be continuing. Some experts say they already have a good idea of where the “next, next Flint” might be.

How Newark became “the next Flint”

The warning signs have been in Newark since 2016 — the same year Flint’s crisis hit the front pages. City officials have long denied it has a major lead problem with its drinking water, insisting the issue was limited to buildings with aging infrastructure — though they did shut water fountains down in more than 30 schools, providing bottled water instead. A city-wide water testing plan was set up in 2017 – and over the following 18 months, multiple tests showed more than 10 percent of homes in the city had lead levels exceeding the 15-parts-per-billion federal limit.

Last fall, the city began giving out water filters to some 40,000 residents. But residents complained that they were not told how necessary the filters were, or were unclear on how to properly install them. Then last week, the Environmental Protection Agency sent the city a letter citing serious concerns about drinking water safety, saying the filters Newark residents were given may never have worked properly. The EPA tested water filtered through the city-provided filters and lead levels still came out above the federal limit.

“We are unable at this time to assure Newark residents that their health is fully protected when drinking tap water filtered through these devices,” the EPA’s letter read.

When the city began handing out bottled water this weekend, some residents waited in line for water for hours, only to find out it was only being passed out to people who live in certain areas. (The National Resource Defense Council brought a federal lawsuit against the city to force Newark to deliver bottled water to expand its bottled water giveaway to residents who are pregnant or have children age 6 or younger in the eastern part of the city.) Efforts hit another snag when officials realized the bottled water had expired and had to temporarily stop the handouts.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka issued a joint statement Monday, calling on federal officials to help. “We take this very seriously,” they said. “We want to be out ahead of this.”

The next “next Flint”

While Newark currently holds the dubious moniker of “the next Flint,” advocates say another city is in the running for the title: Pittsburgh. Lead concerns in the Steel City have been bubbling up for years now, culminating with a major lawsuit brought against the city by Pittsburgh United and the NRDC that was settled earlier this year.

In 2014, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority changed which chemicals they use in the public water pipes. (Chemicals can interact with the lead pipes in different ways, and in some cases, cause corrosion of lead pipes.) By 2016, the number of resident requests for water testing had risen significantly, according to local media. The problem wasn’t publicly acknowledged until 2017, when the city made a plan to distribute water filters to some residents. (That part took through 2018.)

In February 2019, the NRDC and Pittsburgh United settled their lawsuit against the city. The terms? The city agreed to replace thousands of lead pipes, provide all low-income residents with free water filters, and to prioritize action for homes where children live. Lead levels still exceed the federal standard but have been falling over this past year.

“The time lag is extremely serious — and it has a real impact on not only the health of families, but also a huge psychological impact once they find out,” said Dimple Chaudhary, an NRDC attorney and lead counsel in cases against both Flint and Pittsburgh. “I’ve spoken to mothers who are absolutely devastated when they find out they may have fed their baby lead-tainted formula.”

A familiar pattern

So why do these lead problems take so long for cities to acknowledge?

Chaudhary, who is advising on the NRDC and Newark Education Workers Caucus’ lawsuit against Newark (filed in early 2019), says she sees a pattern with lead contamination crises. First, community members suspect there is a problem, but may not have access to all the related information due to a lack of transparency by public officials. As residents advocate their case to city officials, weak regulations, poorly presented data, and low political will can lead to belated city acknowledgment of the problem. And even when both residents and city officials agree that something must be done, finding and implementing a solution can be chaotic.

“You have confusion about the state of the water, you have mixed messages about what people should do, and then, if things go well, you may have a court or part of the government step in and try to fix it,” she said. “But you’ll see in a lot of cases that the damage has already been done, both to people’s health and the public trust.”

Experts agree that issues with collecting and accessing data are a big part of the problem. It starts with weak regulations: The EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule, part of the Safe Drinking Water Act, only requires cities to test for the two metals every three years. And officials are only required to sample about 10 percent of residences. And even that limited data can be hard to access.

“There are technical limitations in place that seem designed to frustrate access to the data,” said Laura Pangallozzi, a visiting professor of geography at Binghamton University. She explained that the publically available data sets on the EPA website are hard to use without programming skills. This can prevent people (even scientists) from being able to look at lead levels in drinking water nationally to identify outliers. And, according to Pangallozzi, some states don’t report their data at all.

Even assuming a city becomes aware of a lead contamination issue, officials do not always let the public know in a timely or efficient manner. Cities are not required to report lead levels to the public until lead levels hit 15 parts per billion — the threshold at which cities must begin corrosion control measures, like adding chlorine to the water to prevent lead seeping in through the pipes, or, if the state requires it, replace lead pipes in the city water infrastructure.

“How officials roll out the public education requirement will have a big impact on how many people know about it,” Pangallozzi said. “Officials have choices in these matters, and it is such a negative for the reputation of a place, there is going to be natural reluctance to publicize.”

Given the proper incentive though, she said, change can happen fast — like when Washington, D.C. discovered it had a lead problem back in 2004. “They got that taken care of very quickly, by comparison,” she said, “because there were members of Congress drinking the water.”

As for a future “next Flint,” Newark and Pittsburgh may only be the tip of the lead pipe. According to an investigative report commissioned by Congress, about 2 percent of public water systems across the country exceeded the federal limit on lead between 2014 and 2016 — and that was with less than half of states reporting back.

“Even Flint’s highest levels were not atypical for water systems that have problems,” Pangallozzi said.

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‘The next Flint,’ and America’s problem with lead in its water

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