The Sponge: July 23-July 29
Welcome to The Sponge, the place to soak up a week’s worth of environmental news.
Bootleg Fire Smoke Goes Coast to Coast
Smoke from the nation’s largest wildfire in Oregon can be seen from space.
Oof. We couldn’t give Jeff Bezos a better view?
You can’t escape everything in space. Meanwhile, the fires in the Western U.S. still rage on. All 83 of them. The largest, the Bootleg Fire, has burned 606 square miles (or, larger than the size of Los Angeles). It is hard to understate the complexity of these spectacles. The fast, unpredictable blazes leap fire breaks and even generate their own kinds of clouds (“pyrocumulonimbus clouds”) that create more rain and lightning. The result? Potentially more wildfires. As thousands of firefighters struggle to contain the flames, their effects were felt this week across the country.
Smoke from the wildfires spread through Middle America and all the way to the East Coast. (This can happen when the smoke rises 20,000–30,000 feet in the air, where wind currents catch it and take it for a ride.) The Indiana Department of Environmental Management said ‘no loitering’ and encouraged residents to spend less time outside on Wednesday and Thursday; people with certain health issues in parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania were told to straight up not go outside. In New York, the air quality index reached 154, contributing towards the city’s worst air quality in 15 years.
Extreme weather events like these demonstrate how interconnected and vulnerable we are to the multi-faceted consequences of climate change. Smoke from fires can be a serious problem for the over 10 percent of US citizens with a lung condition, whether you live 25 or 2,5000 miles away from the flames. And that is not even considering the many homes and livelihoods that the fires have already directly destroyed. We will only continue to witness how broad and intersectional the implications of climate change are, for the entire nation.
In Other News…
Newark Fixes Lead Problem (…Now Can They Fix Living in New Jersey?)
Newark, NJ recently finished replacing 20,000 of its lead pipes. The initiative started in early 2019, and punctuates a sharp turn for this major U.S. city with the highest level of lead contamination in water in 2018. (Yes, it was that bad.) This shift is sure to bring immense public health benefits, as lead contamination in water has been linked to learning disabilities, hearing issues, and damage to the central and peripheral nervous systems in children especially. The program saw no utility price hikes for residents and received broad popular appeal. As a result, the state of New Jersey has now outlined a 10-year plan to remove all lead lines.
That’s a W in the books.
A big one. Lead pipes gained more national attention in the spring when President Biden’s American Jobs Plan promised to wipe all 6 to 10 million of the country’s lead service lines off the map. However, the task of actually digging up and replacing lead pipes, though broadly popular, has been financially and logistically daunting. But with replacing lead pipes still a part of the ongoing infrastructure talks in Congress, Newark provides renewed hope for other efforts across the country to follow this groundbreaking success… **pause for laughter**
Rolllllllll Tide!
The red tide is here. No, that’s not Ted Cruz’s latest fear-mongering tweet about socialism; red tides are red-hued, toxic algae blooms that can devastate marine ecosystems. Red tides are a regular feature of summers in the Gulf of Mexico, but this summer, Florida residents are dealing with an especially expansive bloom that covers 100 miles. For weeks, the algae bloom has dominated Tampa Bay, leaving hundred of tons of dead fish and marine invertebrates to rot at the surface. Literally, millions of fish corpses. Just, floating there.
**Loses Appetite For Next 3 Days**
Same. Although red tides can happen naturally, they are exacerbated by excessive fertilizer, nitrogen, and other pollutants in the water. So, people across Florida have connected this phenomenon to the 200 million gallons of wastewater leaked from the nearby Piney Point phosphate plant in April. Others also feel that recent Hurricane Elsa worsened the effects of the red tide. Things have started looking slightly better this week, but the effects on the local fishing and tourism industry will linger.
And also:
