Tag Archives: river

The ongoing drought may reverse the flow of the Chicago River

by Myrna Posted on January 10, 2013

The ongoing drought may reverse the flow of the Chicago River

By Philip Bump

The state of Michigan has an advertising campaign, “Pure Michigan,” that highlights the state’s many natural attractions. The skiing! The parks! The beautiful Great Lakes!

The beautiful, non-potable Chicago River

I’m curious how they’ll rebrand the effort once those Great Lakes become home to raw sewage from Chicago. From ABC 7 Chicago (and via Stephen Lacey):

Water levels on Lake Michigan are the lowest in recorded history. If the level continues to drop, the Chicago River could reverse itself and send untreated sewage into Lake Michigan. …

“Our river is 70-percent sewage. I think we need to recognize that. This is an open sewer. It depends upon gravity to go away from us. If that gravity does not work with the lake going down, it goes the other way, and we have done nothing to deal with the contaminants that we need to actually invest in fixing,” Henry Henderson, Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Army Corps of Engineers said it is carefully monitoring the situation, and if lake levels continue to drop, they may have to modify how they operate the locks to limit the amount of water that goes into the lake, which would have an impact on recreational boats and barge traffic.

Why is the river full of sewage? Blame the Dave Matthews Band. Why might the river reverse? Blame the ongoing Midwest drought. Forty percent of the state of Illinois is still under drought conditions. And as reported by Reuters last November, Lake Michigan has been hit particularly hard by the drop in water levels.

The water level in Lake Michigan is within two inches of its December record low set 48 years ago. The lake is one of the five lakes that make up the Great Lakes, which cover 94,000 square miles and straddle the United States and Canadian border. …

Drew Gronewold, research hydrologist with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Great Lakes environmental research laboratory said water levels have been dropping since the 1990s.

“Water levels naturally fluctuate and have been at low levels for 10 years. But this year of extreme high water temperatures increased evaporation rapidly and that helped draw down water levels,” Gronewold said.

Imagine a watering can with a long spout near its top. If the can is completely filled, water pushes up into the spout. As water evaporates, water drains back down from the spout into the can itself. Now imagine that the water in the spout is 70 percent untreated sewage.

Some good news: A lock at the end of the Chicago River may ensure that the river’s garbage water doesn’t contaminate the lake too badly. From Fox 32 Chicago:

In an operations center where Water Reclamation District engineers monitor and control flows between Lake Michigan and three local waterways, computer screens told an unusual story. The surface of the Chicago River was a tiny bit higher than the surface of Lake Michigan: 6/100ths of an inch, to be exact.

But, they said, very little water from the polluted river would end up in the lake, thanks largely to a network of recently modernized seawalls and gates.

Which is good news for the Michigan tourism bureau. “Mostly Pure Michigan” still has a ring to it. And it will be easy to spot parts of the lake to avoid. Right after St. Patrick’s Day, for example, you’ll be able to see a green plume where Chicago River seeps into the lake. The rest of the year, the plume will be brown.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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The ongoing drought may reverse the flow of the Chicago River

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Winter storm ‘Draco’ will solve, cause many problems

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 19, 2012

Winter storm ‘Draco’ will solve, cause many problems

By Philip Bump

I guess “draco” is the word for “dragon” in Latin. I didn’t know that, despite Mrs. Marino spending two years teaching me the language in high school. (We got to choose our own Latin names; I chose “Aesculapius,” because I was a dork.) (“Was.”)

Draco is also the name for the giant winter storm dropping snow over the Midwest. See if you can spot it on this map. If you know where the Midwest is, it should be easy.

NOAA

This is good news, for a reason that you might not expect: It’s precipitation in a region desiccated by drought. As we mentioned last week, cities across the region have been setting new records for days without snow. A lot of those records are about to end.

From Weather Underground:

Blizzard warnings are posted over portions of Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and snowfall amounts of up to a foot are expected in some of the affected regions. While the heavy snow will create dangerous travel conditions, the .5″ – 1.5″ of melted water equivalent from the the storm will provide welcome moisture for drought-parched areas of the Midwest. Though much of the moisture will stay locked up as snow for the rest of the year, runoff from the storm may help keep Lake Michigan and Huron from setting an all-time record low for the month of December, and may also keep the Mississippi River at St. Louis above the -5′ stage though the end of December.

That Mississippi River point is big; it has been at risk of having to halt shipping traffic due to low water levels. The storm also means that some areas may see a white Christmas, if the snow sticks around. (This latter point is less important than the Mississippi River.)

Draco’s wintry breath isn’t being felt everywhere. Washington, D.C., has been 7.5 degrees above normal on average so far this month. In Texas?

Lubbock, in west Texas, had a storm of its own.

So Draco is the exception for this warm, dry month. But none of that is the point of this article. The point of this article is: If you were going to name a potentially massive, powerful storm something, why on Earth would you choose Draco over Drago?

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Soot pollution may cause as many as 3.2 million premature deaths a year

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 17, 2012

Soot pollution may cause as many as 3.2 million premature deaths a year

By Philip Bump

Morgan Burke

There are several factors that probably contribute to what the Atlantic Cities refers to as St. Louis’ “asthma epidemic.” High rates of smoking, for example. And: air pollution.

The number of children suffering from asthma in the St. Louis metropolitan area is nearly three times the national average, according to Asthma Friendly St. Louis, a community program designed to help school-age kids and teens manage respiratory illness. Despite the efforts of several community initiatives, the disease is often poorly managed because of a lack of access to care and educational resources. …

In East St. Louis, which sits across the Mississippi River from St. Louis in Illinois, asthma rates are among the highest in the nation, and experts suspect that this is linked to the high rates of pollution and poverty in the city. 44 percent of East St. Louis residents live on incomes below the federal poverty line.

CDC

Missouri asthma hospitalization rates.

The link between pollution and asthma — a terrifying, occasionally deadly inflammation in the lungs — is well-established. But the effects of pollution, particulate soot pollution, may be much broader than previously understood. From the NRDC’s Switchboard blog:

A new study in The Lancet, developed by an international group of experts, finds that outdoor air pollution, especially fine particulate matter (soot) contributes to more than 3.2 million premature deaths around the world each year. …

This new, more refined study also finds that:

Air pollution ranks among the top ten global health risks associated with mortality and disease.
Most of the premature deaths due to air pollution are in China and other countries in Asia. In fact, air pollution is the 4th highest risk factor right behind smoking in East Asia.

But outside of Asia, the risks are still high. Globally, outdoor air pollution ranks as the 8th highest risk factor for premature death, posing a greater danger than high cholesterol.

The study was timed, coincidentally or not, to go public as the EPA announced new restrictions on soot pollution, dropping the allowable standard of small particles by 20 percent — a step that could save 15,000 lives a year.

The group Abt Associates also unveiled Air Counts, an online map that allows visitors to assess the effects of soot reductions in various cities around the country. Dropping the amount of particulate matter in New York City by 250 metric tons a year could save 67 lives — and more than half a billion dollars in costs. (In heavily polluted Beijing, a similar drop would have less of an effect, saving only 29 lives.)

St. Louis is not included on Abt’s map, so it’s hard to say the extent to which lives might be saved by the EPA’s new standard. But in a state that sees a higher rate-of-death from asthma than the rest of the country, particularly among African-Americans …

CDC

… even one life saved makes the calculus worth it.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Soot pollution may cause as many as 3.2 million premature deaths a year

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Supreme Court takes on dirty water

by Myrna Posted on December 3, 2012

Supreme Court takes on dirty water

By Susie Cagle

Nobody wants to take responsibility for nasty, polluted storm-water runoff. But the Supreme Court might soon force a few somebodies to do just that.

cbcastro

Today the court is hearing two cases on runoff from logging roads in the Pacific Northwest, which environmentalists say can threaten fish.

And tomorrow the court will hear a case on Los Angeles’ filthy storm water, which contains “high levels of aluminum, copper, cyanide, fecal coliform bacteria and zinc,” the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said last year. That water flows into the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers and ultimately pollutes the area’s beaches.

The fight over L.A.’s dirty water began back in 2008, when the Natural Resources Defense Council brought suit against the county flood control district, hoping to force stricter measures to prevent water pollution. But the county doesn’t acknowledge that the water is its responsibility. From the Los Angeles Times:

County officials agree storm water is polluting the rivers but disagree on who is responsible. Its one monitoring station along the Los Angeles River is in Long Beach, near where it empties into the ocean.

“Yes, there are pollutants in the water, but dozens of municipalities are upstream from there. It’s a collective runoff. It doesn’t point to a particular source,” Gary Hildebrand, assistant deputy director of the L.A. County Flood Control District, said in an interview.

In court, the flood control district’s lawyers have argued that because the Clean Water Act regulates only “discharges” of pollutants, the county is not responsible for discharges that come from the thousands of drains in the county’s 84 cities.

The dispute, if nothing else, illustrates the difficulty of regulating storm water. The Clean Water Act of 1972 first targeted “point sources” of pollution, such as an industrial plant putting toxic chemicals into a creek, or a sewage plant that was leaking sewage into a river. Violators could be identified and forced to stop the pollution.

By contrast, a heavy storm sends water flowing from across a vast area, picking up pollutants along the way. There is no obvious point source.

Who will win: Clean water or municipal fiefdoms that buck collective responsibility?

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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California is about to get drenched by an ‘atmospheric river’

by Myrna Posted on November 27, 2012

California is about to get drenched by an ‘atmospheric river’

By Philip Bump

This is a post about the weather in California, so it’s only appropriate that it begins with a weed reference.

Remember The Pineapple Express?

In the movie, “Pineapple Express” is the name of the high-quality pot the protagonists enjoy. The dealer, Saul Silver, explains where the name comes from:

My guy Red told me it’s when this Hawaiian flood takes special dirt to the weed or some shit. It’s pretty scientific.

Not quite, Saul. (Saul is not good with details for some reason.) Actually, a Pineapple Express is a weather pattern that brings heavy precipitation to the West Coast. It’s a particular type of a phenomenon called an “atmospheric river.” And if you want to know what happens in an atmospheric river, stick around Northern California for a bit.

From The Sacramento Bee:

[G]et ready for an “atmospheric river” late in the week that will bring perhaps 3 inches of rain to the [Sacramento River] valley region, the National Weather Service said today.

The term of art — atmospheric river — tells the story: [National Weather Service meteorologist Darren] Van Cleave describes it as a “garden hose … focused right in our area.” …

Atmospheric rivers, he said, tend to be longer than they are wide. This one fits that description. But they also tend to affect an area for about 12 to 24 hours. Forecasts show this one lingering over the valley beyond Thursday night well into the weekend.

NOAA

This week’s river.

This isn’t just a rainstorm. As noted by @Burritojustice (a Twitter must-follow), in 1862 a lengthy atmospheric river created a massive, temporary lake in the middle of the state. From Weather Underground:

Massive runoff from the mountains during the warm storms filled the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys almost from the foothills of the Sierra on the east to the hills on the west side of the Great Valley. A giant lake 250-300 miles long and 20 miles wide apparently formed, some 5,000-6,000 square miles (of what is now some of the most valuable agricultural land in the world and home to about 2 million people).

Climate experts fear that a deluge at that scale — or bigger — could happen again.

On occasions, as it presumably did during December 1861-January 1862, this stream of moisture becomes a persistent feature lasting for days and even weeks and funneling storm after storm towards the West Coast of the United States. …

The USGS suggests that up to 120” of rain might fall in California over the course of such an event (in favored orographic locations) the run-off from which would flood the entire Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys as well as the basins of Southern California. A very detailed analysis from the report predicts damage to exceed $300 billion with up to 225,000 people permanently displaced (in terms of complete destruction of dwellings) and a further 1.2 million forced into evacuation.

Flooding from a massive “atmospheric river” event would look something like this:

wunderground

According to a report from the state of California [PDF], climate change is bound to make atmospheric rivers more intense, with increased moisture, warmer air, and a longer “season” during which the storms could occur. Scientists also expect a large increase in the number of so-called “50-year flood” events in the Sierras — the sort of precipitation that drowned the state in 1862.

This week’s storm won’t last for weeks, turning California’s bread basket into a soggy mess. But it could happen, someday — and there’s not much you can do to prepare for it. Evacuate as necessary, get a flashlight and canned food, and, of course, stock up on Pineapple Express.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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