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"content": "\u003cp>Leo Ortega started growing spiky blue agave plants on the arid hillsides around his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A decade later, his property is now dotted with thousands of what he and others hope is a promising new crop for the state following years of \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-droughts-climate-and-environment-e49c8c5c34ead7ef7f83b770082f20bc\">punishing drought\u003c/a> and a push to scale back on \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-groundwater-drought-farming-probation-hearing-38aa9bd2b7d991e6bd1000ec9d8ad771\">groundwater pumping\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 49-year-old mechanical engineer is one of a growing number of Californians planting agave to be harvested and used to make spirits, much like the way tequila and mezcal are made in Mexico. The trend is fueled by the need to find hardy crops that don’t need much water and a booming appetite for premium alcoholic beverages since the COVID-19 pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s attracted entrepreneurs such as Ortega, as well as some California farmers. They’re seeking to shift to more water-efficient crops and irrigation methods to avoid fallowing their fields with looming limits on how much groundwater they can pump, as well as more extreme weather patterns anticipated with climate change. Agave, unlike most other crops, thrives on almost no water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we were watering them, they didn’t really grow much, and the ones that weren’t watered were actually growing better,” Ortega said, walking past rows of the succulents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He is now investing in a distillery after his initial batches of spirits, made from Agave americana, sold for $160 a bottle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consumers started spending more on \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/business-entertainment-arts-and-entertainment-lifestyle-ebdeb1a7751354bf1a78b7eb461de3fa\">high-quality spirits\u003c/a> during the pandemic shutdowns, which spurred a rise in premium beverage products, said Erlinda A. Doherty, an agave spirits expert and consultant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Stuart Woolf, Central Valley farmer\"]‘I have been trying to figure out what is a crop that I can grow that is somewhat climate-resilient, drought-tolerant. … The amount of water I am giving them is so low, I don’t think I am ever going to have a problem.’[/pullquote]Tequila and mezcal were the \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/commodity-markets-business-464e8a74c984d1acd65d81ac6df17c52\">second-fastest growing spirit\u003c/a> category in the country in 2022, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both are proprietary spirits under Mexican laws, which are recognized in U.S. trade agreements. Much like how \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/champagne-beer-intellectual-property-belgium-miller-09f27ee4a921c66e9605893c51fb9b91\">champagne\u003c/a> hails from a region of France, anything called tequila must contain at least 51% blue Weber agave and be distilled in Jalisco or a handful of other Mexican states. Mezcal can be made from a variety of agave types but must be produced in certain Mexican states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agave growers and distillers in California — as well as some in Texas and Arizona — are betting there is an appetite for more agave-based spirits even if they are produced outside of Mexico and not called tequila or mezcal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We seem to have this insatiable thirst for agave, so why not have a domestically grown supply?” Doherty said. “I am kind of bullish on it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alfonso Mojica Navarro, director of the Mexican Chamber of the Tequila Industry, said tequila has a lengthy history, global reputation for excellence and close connection with Mexican culture. While he didn’t comment specifically on California’s foray into agave spirits, he said he believes Mexico can respond to the growing demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The tequila industry is concerned that each time there are more players trying to take advantage of tequila’s success by producing agave spirits, liqueurs or other beverages that allude to the Mexican drink, its origins and characteristics despite not being the same,” he said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agave isn’t grown on a large scale in California yet, and it would take years for that to happen. But spirits, made by cooking the plant’s core to produce sugars that are fermented, are proving popular, said Ventura Spirits owner Henry Tarmy, who distilled his first batch five years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve sold everything we’ve made,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much like Mexico has, California is taking steps to protect its nascent industry. The state legislature enacted a law last year requiring “California agave spirits” be made solely with plants grown in the state and without additives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A dozen growers and a handful of distillers also formed the California Agave Council last year, and the group has tripled in size since then, said Craig Reynolds, the founding director who planted agave in the Northern California community of Davis. He said those making agave spirits have a deep appreciation for Mexican tequila.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have about 45 member growers,” he said. “All of them want more plants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"Related Stories\" postID=\"science_1982673,news_11940344,news_11925400\"]Agave takes little water but presents other challenges. The plant typically takes at least seven years to grow and is tough to harvest, and a mature plant can weigh hundreds of pounds. Once cut, it has to be grown all over again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, many see agave as a viable alternative as California — which supplies the bulk of the country’s produce — explores ways to cut back water use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-water-year-rain-reservoirs-b6385c05b6eb82495f3963e067e568e1\">record rain and snowfall\u003c/a> over the winter mostly ended a three-year drought in California, more dry periods are likely in store. The state enacted a law nearly a decade ago to regulate the pumping of groundwater after excessive pumping led some residents’ wells to run dry and the \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/58e0c7bfe91442f79e304fbdc1bec95d/damage-sinking-land-costing-california-billions\">land to sink\u003c/a>. Scientists expect \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/climate-climate-change-droughts-storms-oregon-3570f775ee3007888cd651d37fcbd465\">extreme weather\u003c/a> patterns will become even more common as the planet warms, causing more drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stuart Woolf, who grows tomatoes and almonds in the state’s crop-rich Central Valley, said he started thinking about agave after estimating he’ll only be able to farm about 60% of his land in 20 years due to water limitations. And that’s despite investing in solar energy and groundwater recharge projects to protect the farm that has been in his family for generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After trying out a test plot a few years ago, Woolf went on to plant some 200,000 agave on land he otherwise would have fallowed. Each acre of agave is taking only 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of water a year — a tenth of what row crops demand and even less than pistachio and almond trees, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woolf and his wife Lisa gave a $100,000 donation to the University of California, Davis, which formed a research fund to look at the succulent’s varieties and its potential as a low-water crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have been trying to figure out what is a crop that I can grow that is somewhat climate-resilient, drought-tolerant, so I can utilize our land,” Woolf said. “The amount of water I am giving them is so low, I don’t think I am ever going to have a problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Leo Ortega started growing spiky blue agave plants on the arid hillsides around his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A decade later, his property is now dotted with thousands of what he and others hope is a promising new crop for the state following years of \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-droughts-climate-and-environment-e49c8c5c34ead7ef7f83b770082f20bc\">punishing drought\u003c/a> and a push to scale back on \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-groundwater-drought-farming-probation-hearing-38aa9bd2b7d991e6bd1000ec9d8ad771\">groundwater pumping\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 49-year-old mechanical engineer is one of a growing number of Californians planting agave to be harvested and used to make spirits, much like the way tequila and mezcal are made in Mexico. The trend is fueled by the need to find hardy crops that don’t need much water and a booming appetite for premium alcoholic beverages since the COVID-19 pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s attracted entrepreneurs such as Ortega, as well as some California farmers. They’re seeking to shift to more water-efficient crops and irrigation methods to avoid fallowing their fields with looming limits on how much groundwater they can pump, as well as more extreme weather patterns anticipated with climate change. Agave, unlike most other crops, thrives on almost no water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we were watering them, they didn’t really grow much, and the ones that weren’t watered were actually growing better,” Ortega said, walking past rows of the succulents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He is now investing in a distillery after his initial batches of spirits, made from Agave americana, sold for $160 a bottle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consumers started spending more on \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/business-entertainment-arts-and-entertainment-lifestyle-ebdeb1a7751354bf1a78b7eb461de3fa\">high-quality spirits\u003c/a> during the pandemic shutdowns, which spurred a rise in premium beverage products, said Erlinda A. Doherty, an agave spirits expert and consultant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Tequila and mezcal were the \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/commodity-markets-business-464e8a74c984d1acd65d81ac6df17c52\">second-fastest growing spirit\u003c/a> category in the country in 2022, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both are proprietary spirits under Mexican laws, which are recognized in U.S. trade agreements. Much like how \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/champagne-beer-intellectual-property-belgium-miller-09f27ee4a921c66e9605893c51fb9b91\">champagne\u003c/a> hails from a region of France, anything called tequila must contain at least 51% blue Weber agave and be distilled in Jalisco or a handful of other Mexican states. Mezcal can be made from a variety of agave types but must be produced in certain Mexican states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agave growers and distillers in California — as well as some in Texas and Arizona — are betting there is an appetite for more agave-based spirits even if they are produced outside of Mexico and not called tequila or mezcal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We seem to have this insatiable thirst for agave, so why not have a domestically grown supply?” Doherty said. “I am kind of bullish on it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alfonso Mojica Navarro, director of the Mexican Chamber of the Tequila Industry, said tequila has a lengthy history, global reputation for excellence and close connection with Mexican culture. While he didn’t comment specifically on California’s foray into agave spirits, he said he believes Mexico can respond to the growing demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The tequila industry is concerned that each time there are more players trying to take advantage of tequila’s success by producing agave spirits, liqueurs or other beverages that allude to the Mexican drink, its origins and characteristics despite not being the same,” he said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agave isn’t grown on a large scale in California yet, and it would take years for that to happen. But spirits, made by cooking the plant’s core to produce sugars that are fermented, are proving popular, said Ventura Spirits owner Henry Tarmy, who distilled his first batch five years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve sold everything we’ve made,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much like Mexico has, California is taking steps to protect its nascent industry. The state legislature enacted a law last year requiring “California agave spirits” be made solely with plants grown in the state and without additives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A dozen growers and a handful of distillers also formed the California Agave Council last year, and the group has tripled in size since then, said Craig Reynolds, the founding director who planted agave in the Northern California community of Davis. He said those making agave spirits have a deep appreciation for Mexican tequila.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have about 45 member growers,” he said. “All of them want more plants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Agave takes little water but presents other challenges. The plant typically takes at least seven years to grow and is tough to harvest, and a mature plant can weigh hundreds of pounds. Once cut, it has to be grown all over again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, many see agave as a viable alternative as California — which supplies the bulk of the country’s produce — explores ways to cut back water use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-water-year-rain-reservoirs-b6385c05b6eb82495f3963e067e568e1\">record rain and snowfall\u003c/a> over the winter mostly ended a three-year drought in California, more dry periods are likely in store. The state enacted a law nearly a decade ago to regulate the pumping of groundwater after excessive pumping led some residents’ wells to run dry and the \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/58e0c7bfe91442f79e304fbdc1bec95d/damage-sinking-land-costing-california-billions\">land to sink\u003c/a>. Scientists expect \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/climate-climate-change-droughts-storms-oregon-3570f775ee3007888cd651d37fcbd465\">extreme weather\u003c/a> patterns will become even more common as the planet warms, causing more drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stuart Woolf, who grows tomatoes and almonds in the state’s crop-rich Central Valley, said he started thinking about agave after estimating he’ll only be able to farm about 60% of his land in 20 years due to water limitations. And that’s despite investing in solar energy and groundwater recharge projects to protect the farm that has been in his family for generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After trying out a test plot a few years ago, Woolf went on to plant some 200,000 agave on land he otherwise would have fallowed. Each acre of agave is taking only 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of water a year — a tenth of what row crops demand and even less than pistachio and almond trees, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woolf and his wife Lisa gave a $100,000 donation to the University of California, Davis, which formed a research fund to look at the succulent’s varieties and its potential as a low-water crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have been trying to figure out what is a crop that I can grow that is somewhat climate-resilient, drought-tolerant, so I can utilize our land,” Woolf said. “The amount of water I am giving them is so low, I don’t think I am ever going to have a problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"headTitle": "As US Wildfires Pollute the Skies, a Loophole is Obscuring the Impact. Can it be Fixed? | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>During wildfire season in the western U.S., soot-clogged skies have long triggered public alerts with advice like: \u003cem>Shut the windows and stay indoors\u003c/em>. For those who can afford it: \u003cem>Use an air filter\u003c/em>. As Canadian wildfire smoke curled down to Kentucky this year, officials began to do the same thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On alert days, “smoke’s there when you wake up in the morning, it’s there when you’re going to bed at night,” said Michelle King, the assistant director of the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She and other regulators say they’re working on how to communicate about smoke — something she anticipates doing more often.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We collectively are seeing, more and more, the very real impacts of climate change, and no reason to think that is slowing down or going away,” King said. “I think that this is a new normal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic, more U.S. states are laboring to understand how and when smoke will make meeting federal health standards harder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The best advice a Boy Scout will give you is, ‘Don’t stand downwind of the campfire,’” said Frank Steitz, an assistant director at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But what if you can’t? What if you can’t avoid it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An obscure part of the Clean Air Act grants regulators an opening to “forgive” air pollution from wildfires, meaning that it doesn’t count against air-quality goals. After wildfires flourished across North America this year, more U.S. states east of the Mississippi may use this exceptional events rule to subtract smoke from the record, if not from the air we breathe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But these exceptional events are no longer exceptional, and the requests to obscure them from air-quality records are more common, according to an investigation from \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The California Newsroom\u003c/em> and \u003cem>MuckRock\u003c/em>. Without reform, the exceptional events rule is likely to become a regularly used tool, one that experts warn may divert resources or distract from addressing the growing problem of wildfire smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finding common ground to change U.S. clean air law is rare. But on wildfire smoke, academics, environmental advocates and some regulators agree: it’s time to reconsider our approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964710\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/River-Fire.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964710\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/River-Fire-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A man wearing neon yellow shirt with silver stripes hands another man a flag over a fence.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/River-Fire-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/River-Fire-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/River-Fire-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/River-Fire.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dave Jefferis hands a flag he rescued from burning to his neighbor, Jim Marchio. Both stayed behind to defend their homes from the River Fire on Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2021. \u003ccite>(Andrew Nixon/CapRadio)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to have to think bigger when it comes to solutions. We’re just getting there,” said Jodi Bechtel, the assistant director for the Department of Environment and Sustainability in Clark County, Nevada. “I cringe at the idea of amending the Clean Air Act because that is such a heavy lift. But I think we’re at the point where the way it’s written and the expectations in it almost aren’t working anymore.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, said Michael Benjamin, the air quality and planning chief at the California Air Resources Board (CARB), and his western colleagues “felt really bad” for eastern cities affected by Canadian fires. “But part of us, especially when it was impacting Washington D.C., we said, well, good,” he remembered. “Now the policymakers really understand what it means to be exposed to wildfire smoke. And maybe they’ll start to think seriously about how to mitigate it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A growing problem\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Smoke from wildland fires is reversing a continent-wide, decades-long trend toward bluer skies, according to recent Stanford University studies.\u003cbr>\nA warming climate has helped to set the stage for wildfires to burn hotter and bigger. “Stopping them or making them less severe is going to be very hard and going to involve intervention on a scale that we’re just currently not prepared or able to do,” said the environmental scientist Marshall Burke, one of the leaders of Stanford’s work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time the likelihood of wildfires grows, the U.S. is considering making stricter goals for ground-level ozone and fine particulate, pointing to an avalanche of studies documenting health impacts. The Biden administration has delayed plans to take action on ozone until after next year’s election. On fine particulates, a contentious public rule-making is expected to yield a more strict standard any day now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet in the face of growing risk, and in anticipation of tighter limits on these types of pollution, state and local governments have been clear: they will turn to exceptional events for relief more often, even if the process is arduous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Lowering the annual standard will require more exceptional event demonstrations, resulting in a significant increase in workload for the state of Arizona and Maricopa County, with no benefit to air quality or public health,” wrote the county’s department of air quality, commenting on the EPA’s proposed soot standard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964709\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964709\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-800x599.jpg\" alt=\"A firefighter uses an instrument to douse flames in a forest.\" width=\"800\" height=\"599\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-800x599.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-1020x764.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-1536x1151.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-2048x1535.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-1920x1439.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A prescribed fire in Hayfork on April 10, 2019. Advocates for the practice of setting planned burns to manage lands and minimize wildfire risk say the exceptional events rule gets in the way. \u003ccite>(Molly Peterson/California Newsroom)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There’s going to be much more pressure on regulatory agencies to take advantage of exceptional events,” added CARB’s Benjamin. “Sometimes people don’t understand what attainment means, and under the Clean Air Act, it’s not necessarily that you’re breathing clean air, it’s that you’re meeting these requirements that are defined by the federal government.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, public agencies and other air policy observers argue that the exceptional events rule effectively undermines one of the few tools states have to combat wildfires: beneficial or “prescribed” burns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Originated by Native Americans, controlled application of fire to wildlands reduces the risk of catastrophic infernos by clearing underbrush, pine needle beds and other fuels that make forests prone to burning. Federal and state agencies say that increasing this “good fire” is a priority. The EPA modified exceptional events guidelines in 2016, in part to do just that. But not a single prescribed fire has been forgiven under the exceptional events rule since then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A group of 86 western scientists, researchers and advocates say that local regulators are not permitting prescribed fires because they fear they could create too much smoke — the kind that warrants exceptional events. “The current statutory scheme is selecting for the very worst type of fire when it comes to public health,” they told the EPA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Near the California-Oregon border, the Mid Klamath Watershed Council advocates for a healthy ecosystem, which the director, Will Harling, said includes the return of beneficial fire. Obstacles to such planned burns, coupled with forgiveness offered wildfires, he said, are why his children “have smoked the equivalent of about 20,000 packs of cigarettes while they’re in their teens”.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Just because they scrub that out of the record doesn’t mean that smoke isn’t in their lungs,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>EPA spokesperson Khanya Brann, responding to our questions in writing, confirmed that exceptional events “could result in the removal of event-influenced data from the data set used to make certain regulatory decisions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brann wrote that local air regulators must meet requirements in the exceptional events process, such as taking “appropriate and reasonable actions to protect public health.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pathways to reform\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Across the political spectrum, experts, advocates and states say it’s time to change the exceptional events rule. They offer vastly different ideas about what that change should look like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>States and their advocates generally seek liberation from regulatory paperwork. Republican senators, led by Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, recently introduced legislation aimed in part at making filing for exceptional events easier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similarly, the Western Governors’ Association has argued for greater state flexibility, complaining both that “the rule is resource intensive, costly, and place[s] a significant burden on strained state resources”, and that regulators are slow to act on it. The nonpartisan association suggested to lawmakers that rules should permit more complicated multistate exceptions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We can’t fix it, goes the reasoning, so why should we be punished for it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The EPA, for its part, maintains it is following the law. “The Clean Air Act requires the agency to address emissions from natural events such as wildfires differently than emissions from industrial or mobile sources that EPA and Tribal, state and local air agency regulations can control,” Brann wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Independent clean-air watchdogs emphasize instead that the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect public health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964711\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Saltfire.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964711\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Saltfire-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Smoke from a massive wildfire with a road in the distance.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Saltfire-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Saltfire-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Saltfire-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Saltfire.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Salt Fire burns in Shasta County, as seen from I-5 June 30, 2021. \u003ccite>(Andrew Nixon/CapRadio)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That could mean stepping up enforcement, said Eric Schaeffer, the executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, a non-profit that advocates for transparency. Plenty of controls already on the books could work better, he said, including more frequent inspections and better monitoring systems for known polluters. “There’s always more that can be done,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michigan attorney Nick Leonard, who represents fence-line communities where Canadian smoke has mingled with routine local pollution, called the exceptional events rule a “misapplication” of the Clean Air Act and pointed out that local air regulators could simply stop using it. “It’s sort of creating this alternative reality,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964713\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964713\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A hazy view of skyscrapers.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hazy New York City skylines during bad air quality on June 7, 2023, due to smoke from Canadian wildfires brought in by wind. \u003ccite>(Lev Radin/Shutterstock)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Though the EPA strips exceptional events-related data from regulatory use, epidemiologists and health experts continue to analyze air quality using unmodified data, \u003ca href=\"https://aqs.epa.gov/aqsweb/airdata/download_files.html\">which remains available.\u003c/a> In its annual State of the Air report, the American Lung Association has always included pollution exceedances that exceptional events would leave out, said Will Barrett, a clean-air expert for the group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those are unhealthy air days,” Barrett said. “Ultimately, your lungs don’t care if the pollution is classified as an exceptional event under an obscure federal law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘A warning light on the dashboard for the Clean Air Act’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For the summer of 2023, more than 20 states so far, from Wyoming to Wisconsin to North Carolina, have flagged air-quality readings that were far higher than normal. Most of these days came in June, as skies in the midwest and eastern U.S. were blanketed with Canadian wildfire smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964714\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964714\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A man wearing a face mask rides a bike in a city with cars and people moving in the background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Many New Yorkers wore face masks on June 7, 2023, because of bad air quality brought in by smoke from Canadian wildfires. \u003ccite>(Lev Radin/Shutterstock)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Wildfire smoke knows no borders. Unlike refineries, wildfires have no scrubbers. You can’t shut them down. But the Clean Air Act, whose pollution controls have saved millions of lives, affords the agency responsible for healthy air no direct authority to manage lands that burn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the EPA’s response to this fast-growing source of soot, ash and toxic chemicals has been “ad hoc” and muddled by a lack of coordination with other agencies, according to a Congressional watchdog’s report earlier this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>EPA spokesperson Brann wrote that the agency “supports efforts by agencies across the federal government — including the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior, as well as interagency forums such as the Wildland Fire Leadership Council — to implement and further develop strategies to reduce wildfire risk, and to help communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from wildfires.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964715\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964715\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-800x532.jpg\" alt=\"A hazy view of a city skyline.\" width=\"800\" height=\"532\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-800x532.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-160x106.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-2048x1363.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-1920x1278.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Canadian wildfire smoke obscures the Chicago skyline on June 29, 2023. \u003ccite>(Dave Jonasen/Shutterstock)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The growing use of the exceptional events rule reveals “a poorer and poorer fit between the policy we have and the problems it’s trying to solve”, said Stanford University’s Michael Wara.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He called the rule “a warning light on the dashboard for the Clean Air Act”.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To heed it, say experts, it’s essential to adapt the law to the conditions under which we already breathe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If fires are going to become more widespread and more predictable, then that changes the calculus for air-quality determinations,” said Schaeffer of the Environmental Integrity Project. “You have to assume that’s part of your baseline now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The landmark law protecting air quality wasn’t created to deal with global heating. But the policies of the past are colliding with the problems of the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964716\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM.png\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964716\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-800x526.png\" alt=\"A hazy view of a bridge.\" width=\"800\" height=\"526\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-800x526.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-1020x671.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-160x105.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-1536x1010.png 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-2048x1347.png 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-1920x1263.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Brooklyn Bridge shrouded in Canadian wildfire smoke this summer. \u003ccite>(Brigid Bergin/Gothamist)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The Clean Air Act should really include climate,” said Benjamin of CARB.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“States who have tried to keep these things separate — to keep climate change and exposure to local air pollution as two distinct things — I don’t think they’re going to be able to maintain that indefinitely,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A key assumption of air pollution policy, said Wara, has been that we are in control: “Climate change is kind of making a mockery of that.”\u003cbr>\nThe obligation to protect people from polluted air remains, he added: “That’s really what the Clean Air Act is supposed to do, is keep people safe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While he was in college, Moiz Mir lived under an orange sky in Sacramento, California, for weeks because of the Camp Fire; some of that pollution was forgiven in nearby Nevada county as an exceptional event. His neighbors didn’t understand the risks of smoke then, or know where to get masks. He began to warn them, to educate himself, and to learn from other fire-prone communities how to cope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smoke, he said, “made a permanent and lasting impact” on his psyche and life path. Now 26 years old and a grassroots climate activist, he points out that “in crisis, people look to authority for answers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re still looking, as the smoke thickens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were thinking like the impacts of climate change were distant,” Mir said. “But now, it’s quite literally the air that I breathe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Manola Secaira contributed to this report.\u003cbr>\nSmoke, Screened: The Clean Air Act’s Dirty Secret is a collaboration of The California Newsroom, MuckRock \u003c/em>and \u003cem>The Guardian. Molly Peterson is a reporter for The California Newsroom. Dillon Bergin is a data reporter for MuckRock. Andrew Witherspoon is a data reporter for The Guardian.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Everyone agrees it’s time to change the Clean Air Act's exceptional events rule, but has different solutions.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>During wildfire season in the western U.S., soot-clogged skies have long triggered public alerts with advice like: \u003cem>Shut the windows and stay indoors\u003c/em>. For those who can afford it: \u003cem>Use an air filter\u003c/em>. As Canadian wildfire smoke curled down to Kentucky this year, officials began to do the same thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On alert days, “smoke’s there when you wake up in the morning, it’s there when you’re going to bed at night,” said Michelle King, the assistant director of the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She and other regulators say they’re working on how to communicate about smoke — something she anticipates doing more often.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We collectively are seeing, more and more, the very real impacts of climate change, and no reason to think that is slowing down or going away,” King said. “I think that this is a new normal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic, more U.S. states are laboring to understand how and when smoke will make meeting federal health standards harder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The best advice a Boy Scout will give you is, ‘Don’t stand downwind of the campfire,’” said Frank Steitz, an assistant director at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But what if you can’t? What if you can’t avoid it?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An obscure part of the Clean Air Act grants regulators an opening to “forgive” air pollution from wildfires, meaning that it doesn’t count against air-quality goals. After wildfires flourished across North America this year, more U.S. states east of the Mississippi may use this exceptional events rule to subtract smoke from the record, if not from the air we breathe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But these exceptional events are no longer exceptional, and the requests to obscure them from air-quality records are more common, according to an investigation from \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The California Newsroom\u003c/em> and \u003cem>MuckRock\u003c/em>. Without reform, the exceptional events rule is likely to become a regularly used tool, one that experts warn may divert resources or distract from addressing the growing problem of wildfire smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finding common ground to change U.S. clean air law is rare. But on wildfire smoke, academics, environmental advocates and some regulators agree: it’s time to reconsider our approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964710\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/River-Fire.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964710\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/River-Fire-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A man wearing neon yellow shirt with silver stripes hands another man a flag over a fence.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/River-Fire-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/River-Fire-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/River-Fire-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/River-Fire.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dave Jefferis hands a flag he rescued from burning to his neighbor, Jim Marchio. Both stayed behind to defend their homes from the River Fire on Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2021. \u003ccite>(Andrew Nixon/CapRadio)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to have to think bigger when it comes to solutions. We’re just getting there,” said Jodi Bechtel, the assistant director for the Department of Environment and Sustainability in Clark County, Nevada. “I cringe at the idea of amending the Clean Air Act because that is such a heavy lift. But I think we’re at the point where the way it’s written and the expectations in it almost aren’t working anymore.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, said Michael Benjamin, the air quality and planning chief at the California Air Resources Board (CARB), and his western colleagues “felt really bad” for eastern cities affected by Canadian fires. “But part of us, especially when it was impacting Washington D.C., we said, well, good,” he remembered. “Now the policymakers really understand what it means to be exposed to wildfire smoke. And maybe they’ll start to think seriously about how to mitigate it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A growing problem\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Smoke from wildland fires is reversing a continent-wide, decades-long trend toward bluer skies, according to recent Stanford University studies.\u003cbr>\nA warming climate has helped to set the stage for wildfires to burn hotter and bigger. “Stopping them or making them less severe is going to be very hard and going to involve intervention on a scale that we’re just currently not prepared or able to do,” said the environmental scientist Marshall Burke, one of the leaders of Stanford’s work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time the likelihood of wildfires grows, the U.S. is considering making stricter goals for ground-level ozone and fine particulate, pointing to an avalanche of studies documenting health impacts. The Biden administration has delayed plans to take action on ozone until after next year’s election. On fine particulates, a contentious public rule-making is expected to yield a more strict standard any day now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet in the face of growing risk, and in anticipation of tighter limits on these types of pollution, state and local governments have been clear: they will turn to exceptional events for relief more often, even if the process is arduous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Lowering the annual standard will require more exceptional event demonstrations, resulting in a significant increase in workload for the state of Arizona and Maricopa County, with no benefit to air quality or public health,” wrote the county’s department of air quality, commenting on the EPA’s proposed soot standard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964709\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964709\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-800x599.jpg\" alt=\"A firefighter uses an instrument to douse flames in a forest.\" width=\"800\" height=\"599\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-800x599.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-1020x764.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-1536x1151.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-2048x1535.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/IMG_7960-1920x1439.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A prescribed fire in Hayfork on April 10, 2019. Advocates for the practice of setting planned burns to manage lands and minimize wildfire risk say the exceptional events rule gets in the way. \u003ccite>(Molly Peterson/California Newsroom)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There’s going to be much more pressure on regulatory agencies to take advantage of exceptional events,” added CARB’s Benjamin. “Sometimes people don’t understand what attainment means, and under the Clean Air Act, it’s not necessarily that you’re breathing clean air, it’s that you’re meeting these requirements that are defined by the federal government.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, public agencies and other air policy observers argue that the exceptional events rule effectively undermines one of the few tools states have to combat wildfires: beneficial or “prescribed” burns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Originated by Native Americans, controlled application of fire to wildlands reduces the risk of catastrophic infernos by clearing underbrush, pine needle beds and other fuels that make forests prone to burning. Federal and state agencies say that increasing this “good fire” is a priority. The EPA modified exceptional events guidelines in 2016, in part to do just that. But not a single prescribed fire has been forgiven under the exceptional events rule since then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A group of 86 western scientists, researchers and advocates say that local regulators are not permitting prescribed fires because they fear they could create too much smoke — the kind that warrants exceptional events. “The current statutory scheme is selecting for the very worst type of fire when it comes to public health,” they told the EPA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Near the California-Oregon border, the Mid Klamath Watershed Council advocates for a healthy ecosystem, which the director, Will Harling, said includes the return of beneficial fire. Obstacles to such planned burns, coupled with forgiveness offered wildfires, he said, are why his children “have smoked the equivalent of about 20,000 packs of cigarettes while they’re in their teens”.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Just because they scrub that out of the record doesn’t mean that smoke isn’t in their lungs,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>EPA spokesperson Khanya Brann, responding to our questions in writing, confirmed that exceptional events “could result in the removal of event-influenced data from the data set used to make certain regulatory decisions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brann wrote that local air regulators must meet requirements in the exceptional events process, such as taking “appropriate and reasonable actions to protect public health.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pathways to reform\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Across the political spectrum, experts, advocates and states say it’s time to change the exceptional events rule. They offer vastly different ideas about what that change should look like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>States and their advocates generally seek liberation from regulatory paperwork. Republican senators, led by Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, recently introduced legislation aimed in part at making filing for exceptional events easier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similarly, the Western Governors’ Association has argued for greater state flexibility, complaining both that “the rule is resource intensive, costly, and place[s] a significant burden on strained state resources”, and that regulators are slow to act on it. The nonpartisan association suggested to lawmakers that rules should permit more complicated multistate exceptions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We can’t fix it, goes the reasoning, so why should we be punished for it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The EPA, for its part, maintains it is following the law. “The Clean Air Act requires the agency to address emissions from natural events such as wildfires differently than emissions from industrial or mobile sources that EPA and Tribal, state and local air agency regulations can control,” Brann wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Independent clean-air watchdogs emphasize instead that the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect public health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964711\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Saltfire.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964711\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Saltfire-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Smoke from a massive wildfire with a road in the distance.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Saltfire-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Saltfire-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Saltfire-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Saltfire.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Salt Fire burns in Shasta County, as seen from I-5 June 30, 2021. \u003ccite>(Andrew Nixon/CapRadio)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That could mean stepping up enforcement, said Eric Schaeffer, the executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, a non-profit that advocates for transparency. Plenty of controls already on the books could work better, he said, including more frequent inspections and better monitoring systems for known polluters. “There’s always more that can be done,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michigan attorney Nick Leonard, who represents fence-line communities where Canadian smoke has mingled with routine local pollution, called the exceptional events rule a “misapplication” of the Clean Air Act and pointed out that local air regulators could simply stop using it. “It’s sort of creating this alternative reality,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964713\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964713\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A hazy view of skyscrapers.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306199-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hazy New York City skylines during bad air quality on June 7, 2023, due to smoke from Canadian wildfires brought in by wind. \u003ccite>(Lev Radin/Shutterstock)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Though the EPA strips exceptional events-related data from regulatory use, epidemiologists and health experts continue to analyze air quality using unmodified data, \u003ca href=\"https://aqs.epa.gov/aqsweb/airdata/download_files.html\">which remains available.\u003c/a> In its annual State of the Air report, the American Lung Association has always included pollution exceedances that exceptional events would leave out, said Will Barrett, a clean-air expert for the group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those are unhealthy air days,” Barrett said. “Ultimately, your lungs don’t care if the pollution is classified as an exceptional event under an obscure federal law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘A warning light on the dashboard for the Clean Air Act’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For the summer of 2023, more than 20 states so far, from Wyoming to Wisconsin to North Carolina, have flagged air-quality readings that were far higher than normal. Most of these days came in June, as skies in the midwest and eastern U.S. were blanketed with Canadian wildfire smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964714\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964714\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A man wearing a face mask rides a bike in a city with cars and people moving in the background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2314306239-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Many New Yorkers wore face masks on June 7, 2023, because of bad air quality brought in by smoke from Canadian wildfires. \u003ccite>(Lev Radin/Shutterstock)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Wildfire smoke knows no borders. Unlike refineries, wildfires have no scrubbers. You can’t shut them down. But the Clean Air Act, whose pollution controls have saved millions of lives, affords the agency responsible for healthy air no direct authority to manage lands that burn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, the EPA’s response to this fast-growing source of soot, ash and toxic chemicals has been “ad hoc” and muddled by a lack of coordination with other agencies, according to a Congressional watchdog’s report earlier this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>EPA spokesperson Brann wrote that the agency “supports efforts by agencies across the federal government — including the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior, as well as interagency forums such as the Wildland Fire Leadership Council — to implement and further develop strategies to reduce wildfire risk, and to help communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from wildfires.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964715\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964715\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-800x532.jpg\" alt=\"A hazy view of a city skyline.\" width=\"800\" height=\"532\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-800x532.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-160x106.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-2048x1363.jpg 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/shutterstock_2324780883-1920x1278.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Canadian wildfire smoke obscures the Chicago skyline on June 29, 2023. \u003ccite>(Dave Jonasen/Shutterstock)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The growing use of the exceptional events rule reveals “a poorer and poorer fit between the policy we have and the problems it’s trying to solve”, said Stanford University’s Michael Wara.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He called the rule “a warning light on the dashboard for the Clean Air Act”.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To heed it, say experts, it’s essential to adapt the law to the conditions under which we already breathe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If fires are going to become more widespread and more predictable, then that changes the calculus for air-quality determinations,” said Schaeffer of the Environmental Integrity Project. “You have to assume that’s part of your baseline now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The landmark law protecting air quality wasn’t created to deal with global heating. But the policies of the past are colliding with the problems of the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964716\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM.png\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964716\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-800x526.png\" alt=\"A hazy view of a bridge.\" width=\"800\" height=\"526\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-800x526.png 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-1020x671.png 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-160x105.png 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-1536x1010.png 1536w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-2048x1347.png 2048w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Screen-Shot-2023-10-13-at-9.40.42-AM-1920x1263.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Brooklyn Bridge shrouded in Canadian wildfire smoke this summer. \u003ccite>(Brigid Bergin/Gothamist)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The Clean Air Act should really include climate,” said Benjamin of CARB.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“States who have tried to keep these things separate — to keep climate change and exposure to local air pollution as two distinct things — I don’t think they’re going to be able to maintain that indefinitely,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A key assumption of air pollution policy, said Wara, has been that we are in control: “Climate change is kind of making a mockery of that.”\u003cbr>\nThe obligation to protect people from polluted air remains, he added: “That’s really what the Clean Air Act is supposed to do, is keep people safe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While he was in college, Moiz Mir lived under an orange sky in Sacramento, California, for weeks because of the Camp Fire; some of that pollution was forgiven in nearby Nevada county as an exceptional event. His neighbors didn’t understand the risks of smoke then, or know where to get masks. He began to warn them, to educate himself, and to learn from other fire-prone communities how to cope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smoke, he said, “made a permanent and lasting impact” on his psyche and life path. Now 26 years old and a grassroots climate activist, he points out that “in crisis, people look to authority for answers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re still looking, as the smoke thickens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We were thinking like the impacts of climate change were distant,” Mir said. “But now, it’s quite literally the air that I breathe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Manola Secaira contributed to this report.\u003cbr>\nSmoke, Screened: The Clean Air Act’s Dirty Secret is a collaboration of The California Newsroom, MuckRock \u003c/em>and \u003cem>The Guardian. Molly Peterson is a reporter for The California Newsroom. Dillon Bergin is a data reporter for MuckRock. Andrew Witherspoon is a data reporter for The Guardian.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "in-detroit-a-magic-wand-makes-dirty-air-look-clean-and-lets-polluters-off-the-hook",
"title": "In Detroit, a 'Magic Wand' Makes Dirty Air Look Clean — and Lets Polluters Off the Hook",
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"headTitle": "In Detroit, a ‘Magic Wand’ Makes Dirty Air Look Clean — and Lets Polluters Off the Hook | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>In southeast Detroit, the Environmental Protection Agency says, the air is clean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robert Shobe’s lungs tell a different story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like a lot of Detroiters, Shobe suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, also known as COPD, a long-term lung ailment that flares up when the air is smoggy or smokey. On those days, Shobe said: “I probably am low on energy, and I feel like I’m seeing a haze in the air.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Traffic, industrial sources and meteorological conditions often worsen pollution in his part of town. One of Shobe’s closest neighbors is the Stellantis Mack Assembly Plant, where Jeep Wagoneers roll off the line. Since opening a paint shop on the property just over two years ago, it has racked up eight air pollution violations and fines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Shobe was baffled when he heard in May of 2023 that Detroit had three years of clean-air data, and that according to the EPA, the region met strict federal air-quality standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators for Wayne County, where Detroit is located, accomplished that feat by removing two of the highest-ozone days from their calculations. They could do that because they had identified a surprising source of dirty air: wildfires burning across the border, in other states and in Canada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using a little-known loophole in the Clean Air Act, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) had made the case to the EPA that pollution on those days stemmed from an exceptional event, defined as something uncontrollable, unlikely to recur and, often, natural: wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “exceptional events rule” allows the EPA to strike pollution caused by these events from the record, allowing regulators to meet clean-air goals on paper, without forcing local industry to comply with tighter pollution controls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964686\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964686\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A Black man sits inside a home at a dinner table.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robert Shobe, who lives adjacent to the Stellantis Mack Auto Assembly Plant, in Detroit, Michigan, on Oct. 3, 2023. Shobe suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which gets worse on days when the air is smoggy or smoky. \u003ccite>(Brittany Greeson/The Guardian)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In Michigan, a regulator referred to the process as a “magic wand.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That wand is regularly, if quietly, being waved. An investigation by The California Newsroom, MuckRock and \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em> found that state and local air-quality managers across the U.S. increasingly rely on the rule to meet air-quality goals because of wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/MuckRock/air-quality-exceptional-events\">review of federal data\u003c/a>, as well as thousands of pages of regulatory records, shows that at least 21 million people, including in Michigan, now live and breathe \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/projects/final-agency-actions-215474/\">in areas where the EPA has forgiven pollution (DOC)\u003c/a> from at least one “exceptional event,” often a wildfire, since the law took effect. Public contracts and correspondence also reveal how local governments have spent millions in taxpayer dollars to \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/projects/exceptional-event-demonstrations-215472/\">seek forgiveness for pollution (DOC)\u003c/a> related to “exceptional events,” helped at times by industry lobbyists, who pushed for the expansion of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.levernews.com/oil-lobby-pushed-pollution-loophole-for-wildfire-smoke/\">loophole in the Clean Air Act\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-4-1.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11964684\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-4-1-800x674.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"674\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-4-1-800x674.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-4-1-1020x859.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-4-1-160x135.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-4-1.png 1240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>From the mountain west to the Rust Belt and into the south, utility, energy and business advocates have worked to promote the rule’s use, aiming to avoid costly emission controls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It isn’t just industry that benefits, said John Walke, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. The nonprofit environmental advocacy organization has sued the EPA over its interpretation of the rule. “Loopholes and exceptions [like this one] are treated as get-out-of-jail-free cards for politicians who are balancing economic activities and development with the need for clean air and public health,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>In and out of limbo\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, Detroit was on tenterhooks. The region had been struggling toward clean air since 2015, when the EPA last lowered the healthy standard for ozone. State officials argued to the EPA that the region had improved enough to meet air-quality goals. Just in case, they were ready to enact tighter and more costly pollution controls in southeast Michigan, as well as a new vehicle inspection program — an unpopular idea in the Motor City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-5-1.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11964685\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-5-1-800x743.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"743\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-5-1-800x743.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-5-1-1020x948.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-5-1-160x149.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-5-1.png 1240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then air-pollution numbers spiked in Shobe’s neighborhood in June and July of 2022, stalling progress with the EPA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Publicly, the Michigan Manufacturers Association, a 120-year-old, politically powerful trade group, warned that “limbo” about Detroit’s air-quality designation would “dampen business growth in the region.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Air regulators and government officials heeded that warning. Behind the scenes, despite the persistent problems with Detroit’s air and the health consequences for members of the public like Shobe, they worked under tight deadlines to obtain Detroit’s clean bill of air health, emails show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Top officials from the office of governor Gretchen Whitmer sought meetings with regulators, beginning in July of last year. The Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), a regional planning partnership, joined the effort. In October, an air-quality specialist with the environment, Great Lakes and energy department wrote to counterparts at the council: “We know that conversations are continuing to be had ‘at the White House level’ about Detroit ozone.” In November, lobbyist Mary Beth McGowan emailed SEMCOG staffers about a call between the governor’s chief of staff and the EPA’s deputy administrator, Janet McCabe. The call appears on McCabe’s public calendar on November 21. By January of 2023, Michigan had assembled its “demonstration” of an exceptional event. Southeast Michigan’s last-ditch effort to receive a passing grade for its air quality had taken only a few months to assemble. By March of this year, the EPA indicated it would work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One scientist has called the demonstration “a challenging one to review.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In my opinion, the evidence that the days described were impacted by smoke due to wildfires was limited,” said Dan Jaffe, a professor of atmospheric and environmental chemistry at the University of Washington-Bothell who has advised the EPA, states including Louisiana and private companies on the movement and makeup of ozone pollution. “And I understand why the community has concerns over that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Responding to Jaffe’s comment, the EPA wrote that the “rationale for approving Michigan’s demonstration [is] consistent” with the exceptional events rule. The EPA also said it objects to the word “loophole,” arguing it “delegitimizes the process established by Congress in the Clean Air Act and implemented by EPA.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964688\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964688\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A white house with a black door and steps.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ‘Justice for Beniteau Street Residents’ sign hangs in a neighbor’s home across the street from Robert Shobe’s home. \u003ccite>(Brittany Greeson/The Guardian)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Critics of the exceptional events rule say the implications of the conversations among regulators, lobbyists and high-ranking government officials like the ones in Michigan are significant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Anytime you bring politics into a decision like this, it can skew the decision-making,” said Nick Leonard, an attorney with the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center in Michigan who reviewed the emails. Pointing to the potential harm to people like Robert Shobe, Leonard has sued the EPA over Detroit’s redesignation and the exceptional event decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his opinion, Michigan regulators “don’t want to enact more stringent regulations on some of the major industry in the area, many of which are auto-assembly plants and a very powerful political force in Michigan and nationally.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michigan air-quality regulators declined to be interviewed, as did the Michigan governor’s office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The EPA declined to comment on pending litigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Shocking and unseemly’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In other parts of the country, industry and economic interests are involved in making these cases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators have approached the EPA about exceptional events, or actually made filings, in at least 29 states. Emails and documents show that in more than half of those states, lobbyists and business groups weighed in on those efforts. In some places, private industry is paying to support these requests, revealing a close-knit effort between local authorities and businesses to protect the status quo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Midwest Ozone Group, a powerful collective of utility companies and trade organizations that regularly opposes ozone controls, wrote public comments and sought meetings with regulators on wildfire exceptional events in western Michigan, Cook County, Illinois, and Cincinnati, Ohio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964691\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964691\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A white man wearing a blue shirt sits down inside.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nick Leonard at his home in Detroit, Michigan, on Oct. 6, 2023. Leonard is suing the EPA over the agency’s clean air determination for Detroit. \u003ccite>(Brittany Greeson/The Guardian)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In Kentucky, one member of the group, Louisville Gas and Electric (LGE), a for-profit company, paid for an exceptional event analysis blaming excess ozone pollution on the \u003ca href=\"https://dffm.az.gov/2020-wildfire-season-one-worst-decade\">2020 wildfires in Arizona\u003c/a>. Emails describe meetings about the analysis among regulators, the utility and a local chamber of commerce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was the first time LGE indicated interest in exceptional events; it didn’t surprise Michelle King, the assistant director of the Louisville metro air pollution control district. The power sector is “very savvy,” she said, adding that such companies “understood the implications of what an exceptional event would or wouldn’t do with regard to our area’s non-attainment, and then the effect that that would have on them.” In the end, the district did not formally submit the analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964689\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964689\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A wide view of a complex with railroad tracks.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Part of a complex encompassing both the North Assembly and the Stellantis Mack Assembly Plant in Detroit, Michigan, on Oct. 3, 2023. \u003ccite>(Brittany Greeson/The Guardian)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, representing major refiners like ExxonMobil, regional midstream companies, and marketing firms, paid for an exceptional event filing in Louisiana in 2017. That demonstration allowed the five-parish Baton Rouge area to meet its air-quality goals for the first time, affecting 800,000 people. It also let local polluters avoid tougher regulations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are going full bore on this one,” wrote Vivian Aucoin, a senior scientist for the Louisiana department of environmental quality, in an email from October 2017. “Use whatever or whoever you need to get the information we need to prove” that wildfires were to blame, she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aucoin, who now goes by Vivian Johnson, said that in lieu of payment for violations, industry trade groups in Louisiana “often” pay for “beneficial environmental projects.” In this case, “the state didn’t have the money we needed,” she said. “And so their industry members bellied up to the bar and paid for the modelling that needed to be done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association did not return a request for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked about industry involvement in Louisiana, the EPA said “[f]or questions about how air agencies prepare their demonstrations, including coordination with industry or other parties, EPA recommends those questions be directed to specific air agencies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think people understand the degree to which there’s such a cozy, tightly woven tapestry of relationships between regulated industries and their regulators,” said John Walke, with the NRDC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is “an entirely rational undertaking by these industries and their lawyers and their lobbyists,” he said. “There’s no downside to them crying chicken or being wrong because at worst, the agency doesn’t bite, but at best they express interest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I hope that it is shocking and unseemly to the public.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Millions of taxpayer dollars\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Removing bad air days from the record isn’t cheap. States are spending millions of taxpayer dollars to get pollution forgiven, according to public contracts and requests. Local regulators regularly complain that applying for exceptional events is expensive and time-consuming. The reports filed to the EPA can often run into hundreds of pages with detailed scientific analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The price of filing for an exceptional event appears to range widely, depending on the scope and complexity of the work, as well as the cost of external consultants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2018, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) estimated that one filing cost as much as $20,000 and 200 hours to prepare. At a congressional hearing in 2017, a Wyoming state regulator estimated “that it would take about 15 months and contractor assistance at a cost of over $150,000 to produce just one” demonstration for ozone-related to wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A clearer picture emerges when consultants get involved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has committed to spending nearly $5 million across 19 contracts since 2018, toward work to improve exceptional event modeling and monitoring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Texas is waiting to hear from the EPA about two open requests: one to exclude pollution related to wind in the El Paso area, and the other to exclude some smog pollution around Houston because of wildfires, mostly in neighboring gulf states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a written response to questions, TCEQ said that it “routinely” conducts research, and that it “disagrees with the assertion that the exceptional events rule prioritizes any entity over public health.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Clark County, Nevada, home to Las Vegas, local air officials have mounted a sustained campaign to take advantage of exceptional events, including arguing that wildfires are beyond local control. In 2021, the county filed 17 exceptional event determinations with federal regulators; the EPA rejected five of them, and declined to weigh in on the rest. All told, Clark County has approved spending more than $3.3 million over a nine-year period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s pushed to the regional level and we’re supposed to solve it. We cannot solve it alone,” said Jodi Bechtel, an assistant director for the department of environment and sustainability in Clark County, Nevada. “We’re lucky to have the resources to be able to put these exceptional event packages together and commit these millions of dollars to at least maybe do them if we need them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No state has filed more requests than California, where the state air resources board (CARB) has invested significant resources in developing analysis and requests, even as staffers point out it takes months to work with the EPA on demonstrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I know that probably makes it seem to people like we’re taking advantage of a loophole, to try to show attainment,” said Michael Benjamin, chief of the air quality planning and science division at CARB.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But breathing clean air isn’t the same thing as meeting federal air requirements, he said, which carries legal consequences: “If there weren’t such significant repercussions for not attaining, like the potential loss of federal highway funds and so on, then there wouldn’t be that pressure on air districts and CARB to really take full advantage of exceptional events.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michigan regulators reckoned they spent 250 hours writing last year’s exceptional event demonstration — but declined to provide a cost estimate.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘It still happened’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In July, the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center and the Sierra Club \u003ca href=\"https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-07/23-3583_Documents.pdf\">sued (PDF) \u003c/a>the EPA over its decision to move Detroit back into attainment. A successful lawsuit could force regulators to reimpose the controls they drafted. It would also require them to be more transparent about Detroit’s air quality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Excluding data to say that the air is clean is a “disservice to the public and the community,” said Democratic U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who represents Detroit. “Either we’re for addressing the climate crisis or we’re not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964687\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964687\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A Black man wearing a cap and t-shirt sits in a chair looking to the side.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shobe has his own air monitor on his porch. \u003ccite>(Brittany Greeson/The Guardian)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Tlaib argues that the federal government should do better at counting the cumulative impacts of pollution. “I want those that are making these decisions and these exceptions and carve-outs to know that jobs don’t cure cancer,” she said. “They don’t stop the increase of asthma among our children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michigan officials didn’t comment, but pointed to a recently published blog post where the department of environment, Great Lakes, and energy \u003ca href=\"https://www.michigan.gov/egle/newsroom/mi-environment/2023/08/28/wildfire-smoke-and-pollution-a-primer-on-michigans-attainment-status\">wrote\u003c/a> that it “remains to be seen” whether the state will apply for more exemptions this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In southeast Detroit, Robert Shobe has his own air monitor on his porch. He trusts it, he said, regardless of what the official numbers say about two smoggy days last June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It still happened,” he said. The policies don’t make sense to him; he said it’s wrong “that they can have a way to take away something that you have documentation of.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m a throwaway, I’m in a sacrifice zone,” he said. “We complain, we file complaints, we’re doing everything we can to fight for ourselves, and they hide behind loopholes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Smoke, Screened: The Clean Air Act’s Dirty Secret is a collaboration of The California Newsroom, MuckRock and \u003c/em>The Guardian\u003cem>. Molly Peterson is a reporter for The California Newsroom. Dillon Bergin is a data reporter for MuckRock. Andrew Witherspoon is a data reporter for \u003c/em>The Guardian\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Across the US, local governments, lobbyists and industry have spent millions to get wildfire pollution excluded from the record. People like Robert Shobe pay the price.",
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"title": "In Detroit, a 'Magic Wand' Makes Dirty Air Look Clean — and Lets Polluters Off the Hook | KQED",
"description": "Across the US, local governments, lobbyists and industry have spent millions to get wildfire pollution excluded from the record. People like Robert Shobe pay the price.",
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"headline": "In Detroit, a 'Magic Wand' Makes Dirty Air Look Clean — and Lets Polluters Off the Hook",
"datePublished": "2023-10-17T03:00:02-07:00",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In southeast Detroit, the Environmental Protection Agency says, the air is clean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Robert Shobe’s lungs tell a different story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like a lot of Detroiters, Shobe suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, also known as COPD, a long-term lung ailment that flares up when the air is smoggy or smokey. On those days, Shobe said: “I probably am low on energy, and I feel like I’m seeing a haze in the air.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Traffic, industrial sources and meteorological conditions often worsen pollution in his part of town. One of Shobe’s closest neighbors is the Stellantis Mack Assembly Plant, where Jeep Wagoneers roll off the line. Since opening a paint shop on the property just over two years ago, it has racked up eight air pollution violations and fines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Shobe was baffled when he heard in May of 2023 that Detroit had three years of clean-air data, and that according to the EPA, the region met strict federal air-quality standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators for Wayne County, where Detroit is located, accomplished that feat by removing two of the highest-ozone days from their calculations. They could do that because they had identified a surprising source of dirty air: wildfires burning across the border, in other states and in Canada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using a little-known loophole in the Clean Air Act, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) had made the case to the EPA that pollution on those days stemmed from an exceptional event, defined as something uncontrollable, unlikely to recur and, often, natural: wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The “exceptional events rule” allows the EPA to strike pollution caused by these events from the record, allowing regulators to meet clean-air goals on paper, without forcing local industry to comply with tighter pollution controls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964686\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964686\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A Black man sits inside a home at a dinner table.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__17-2-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robert Shobe, who lives adjacent to the Stellantis Mack Auto Assembly Plant, in Detroit, Michigan, on Oct. 3, 2023. Shobe suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which gets worse on days when the air is smoggy or smoky. \u003ccite>(Brittany Greeson/The Guardian)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In Michigan, a regulator referred to the process as a “magic wand.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That wand is regularly, if quietly, being waved. An investigation by The California Newsroom, MuckRock and \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em> found that state and local air-quality managers across the U.S. increasingly rely on the rule to meet air-quality goals because of wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/MuckRock/air-quality-exceptional-events\">review of federal data\u003c/a>, as well as thousands of pages of regulatory records, shows that at least 21 million people, including in Michigan, now live and breathe \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/projects/final-agency-actions-215474/\">in areas where the EPA has forgiven pollution (DOC)\u003c/a> from at least one “exceptional event,” often a wildfire, since the law took effect. Public contracts and correspondence also reveal how local governments have spent millions in taxpayer dollars to \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/projects/exceptional-event-demonstrations-215472/\">seek forgiveness for pollution (DOC)\u003c/a> related to “exceptional events,” helped at times by industry lobbyists, who pushed for the expansion of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.levernews.com/oil-lobby-pushed-pollution-loophole-for-wildfire-smoke/\">loophole in the Clean Air Act\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-4-1.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11964684\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-4-1-800x674.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"674\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-4-1-800x674.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-4-1-1020x859.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-4-1-160x135.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-4-1.png 1240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>From the mountain west to the Rust Belt and into the south, utility, energy and business advocates have worked to promote the rule’s use, aiming to avoid costly emission controls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It isn’t just industry that benefits, said John Walke, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. The nonprofit environmental advocacy organization has sued the EPA over its interpretation of the rule. “Loopholes and exceptions [like this one] are treated as get-out-of-jail-free cards for politicians who are balancing economic activities and development with the need for clean air and public health,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>In and out of limbo\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, Detroit was on tenterhooks. The region had been struggling toward clean air since 2015, when the EPA last lowered the healthy standard for ozone. State officials argued to the EPA that the region had improved enough to meet air-quality goals. Just in case, they were ready to enact tighter and more costly pollution controls in southeast Michigan, as well as a new vehicle inspection program — an unpopular idea in the Motor City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-5-1.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11964685\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-5-1-800x743.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"743\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-5-1-800x743.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-5-1-1020x948.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-5-1-160x149.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/inArticle-620@2x-5-1.png 1240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then air-pollution numbers spiked in Shobe’s neighborhood in June and July of 2022, stalling progress with the EPA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Publicly, the Michigan Manufacturers Association, a 120-year-old, politically powerful trade group, warned that “limbo” about Detroit’s air-quality designation would “dampen business growth in the region.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Air regulators and government officials heeded that warning. Behind the scenes, despite the persistent problems with Detroit’s air and the health consequences for members of the public like Shobe, they worked under tight deadlines to obtain Detroit’s clean bill of air health, emails show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Top officials from the office of governor Gretchen Whitmer sought meetings with regulators, beginning in July of last year. The Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), a regional planning partnership, joined the effort. In October, an air-quality specialist with the environment, Great Lakes and energy department wrote to counterparts at the council: “We know that conversations are continuing to be had ‘at the White House level’ about Detroit ozone.” In November, lobbyist Mary Beth McGowan emailed SEMCOG staffers about a call between the governor’s chief of staff and the EPA’s deputy administrator, Janet McCabe. The call appears on McCabe’s public calendar on November 21. By January of 2023, Michigan had assembled its “demonstration” of an exceptional event. Southeast Michigan’s last-ditch effort to receive a passing grade for its air quality had taken only a few months to assemble. By March of this year, the EPA indicated it would work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One scientist has called the demonstration “a challenging one to review.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In my opinion, the evidence that the days described were impacted by smoke due to wildfires was limited,” said Dan Jaffe, a professor of atmospheric and environmental chemistry at the University of Washington-Bothell who has advised the EPA, states including Louisiana and private companies on the movement and makeup of ozone pollution. “And I understand why the community has concerns over that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Responding to Jaffe’s comment, the EPA wrote that the “rationale for approving Michigan’s demonstration [is] consistent” with the exceptional events rule. The EPA also said it objects to the word “loophole,” arguing it “delegitimizes the process established by Congress in the Clean Air Act and implemented by EPA.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964688\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964688\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A white house with a black door and steps.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__39-2-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ‘Justice for Beniteau Street Residents’ sign hangs in a neighbor’s home across the street from Robert Shobe’s home. \u003ccite>(Brittany Greeson/The Guardian)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Critics of the exceptional events rule say the implications of the conversations among regulators, lobbyists and high-ranking government officials like the ones in Michigan are significant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Anytime you bring politics into a decision like this, it can skew the decision-making,” said Nick Leonard, an attorney with the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center in Michigan who reviewed the emails. Pointing to the potential harm to people like Robert Shobe, Leonard has sued the EPA over Detroit’s redesignation and the exceptional event decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his opinion, Michigan regulators “don’t want to enact more stringent regulations on some of the major industry in the area, many of which are auto-assembly plants and a very powerful political force in Michigan and nationally.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michigan air-quality regulators declined to be interviewed, as did the Michigan governor’s office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The EPA declined to comment on pending litigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Shocking and unseemly’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In other parts of the country, industry and economic interests are involved in making these cases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators have approached the EPA about exceptional events, or actually made filings, in at least 29 states. Emails and documents show that in more than half of those states, lobbyists and business groups weighed in on those efforts. In some places, private industry is paying to support these requests, revealing a close-knit effort between local authorities and businesses to protect the status quo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Midwest Ozone Group, a powerful collective of utility companies and trade organizations that regularly opposes ozone controls, wrote public comments and sought meetings with regulators on wildfire exceptional events in western Michigan, Cook County, Illinois, and Cincinnati, Ohio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964691\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964691\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A white man wearing a blue shirt sits down inside.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis_2__27-2-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nick Leonard at his home in Detroit, Michigan, on Oct. 6, 2023. Leonard is suing the EPA over the agency’s clean air determination for Detroit. \u003ccite>(Brittany Greeson/The Guardian)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In Kentucky, one member of the group, Louisville Gas and Electric (LGE), a for-profit company, paid for an exceptional event analysis blaming excess ozone pollution on the \u003ca href=\"https://dffm.az.gov/2020-wildfire-season-one-worst-decade\">2020 wildfires in Arizona\u003c/a>. Emails describe meetings about the analysis among regulators, the utility and a local chamber of commerce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was the first time LGE indicated interest in exceptional events; it didn’t surprise Michelle King, the assistant director of the Louisville metro air pollution control district. The power sector is “very savvy,” she said, adding that such companies “understood the implications of what an exceptional event would or wouldn’t do with regard to our area’s non-attainment, and then the effect that that would have on them.” In the end, the district did not formally submit the analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964689\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964689\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A wide view of a complex with railroad tracks.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__47-2-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Part of a complex encompassing both the North Assembly and the Stellantis Mack Assembly Plant in Detroit, Michigan, on Oct. 3, 2023. \u003ccite>(Brittany Greeson/The Guardian)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, representing major refiners like ExxonMobil, regional midstream companies, and marketing firms, paid for an exceptional event filing in Louisiana in 2017. That demonstration allowed the five-parish Baton Rouge area to meet its air-quality goals for the first time, affecting 800,000 people. It also let local polluters avoid tougher regulations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are going full bore on this one,” wrote Vivian Aucoin, a senior scientist for the Louisiana department of environmental quality, in an email from October 2017. “Use whatever or whoever you need to get the information we need to prove” that wildfires were to blame, she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aucoin, who now goes by Vivian Johnson, said that in lieu of payment for violations, industry trade groups in Louisiana “often” pay for “beneficial environmental projects.” In this case, “the state didn’t have the money we needed,” she said. “And so their industry members bellied up to the bar and paid for the modelling that needed to be done.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association did not return a request for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked about industry involvement in Louisiana, the EPA said “[f]or questions about how air agencies prepare their demonstrations, including coordination with industry or other parties, EPA recommends those questions be directed to specific air agencies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think people understand the degree to which there’s such a cozy, tightly woven tapestry of relationships between regulated industries and their regulators,” said John Walke, with the NRDC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is “an entirely rational undertaking by these industries and their lawyers and their lobbyists,” he said. “There’s no downside to them crying chicken or being wrong because at worst, the agency doesn’t bite, but at best they express interest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I hope that it is shocking and unseemly to the public.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Millions of taxpayer dollars\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Removing bad air days from the record isn’t cheap. States are spending millions of taxpayer dollars to get pollution forgiven, according to public contracts and requests. Local regulators regularly complain that applying for exceptional events is expensive and time-consuming. The reports filed to the EPA can often run into hundreds of pages with detailed scientific analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The price of filing for an exceptional event appears to range widely, depending on the scope and complexity of the work, as well as the cost of external consultants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2018, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) estimated that one filing cost as much as $20,000 and 200 hours to prepare. At a congressional hearing in 2017, a Wyoming state regulator estimated “that it would take about 15 months and contractor assistance at a cost of over $150,000 to produce just one” demonstration for ozone-related to wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A clearer picture emerges when consultants get involved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has committed to spending nearly $5 million across 19 contracts since 2018, toward work to improve exceptional event modeling and monitoring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Texas is waiting to hear from the EPA about two open requests: one to exclude pollution related to wind in the El Paso area, and the other to exclude some smog pollution around Houston because of wildfires, mostly in neighboring gulf states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a written response to questions, TCEQ said that it “routinely” conducts research, and that it “disagrees with the assertion that the exceptional events rule prioritizes any entity over public health.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Clark County, Nevada, home to Las Vegas, local air officials have mounted a sustained campaign to take advantage of exceptional events, including arguing that wildfires are beyond local control. In 2021, the county filed 17 exceptional event determinations with federal regulators; the EPA rejected five of them, and declined to weigh in on the rest. All told, Clark County has approved spending more than $3.3 million over a nine-year period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s pushed to the regional level and we’re supposed to solve it. We cannot solve it alone,” said Jodi Bechtel, an assistant director for the department of environment and sustainability in Clark County, Nevada. “We’re lucky to have the resources to be able to put these exceptional event packages together and commit these millions of dollars to at least maybe do them if we need them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No state has filed more requests than California, where the state air resources board (CARB) has invested significant resources in developing analysis and requests, even as staffers point out it takes months to work with the EPA on demonstrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I know that probably makes it seem to people like we’re taking advantage of a loophole, to try to show attainment,” said Michael Benjamin, chief of the air quality planning and science division at CARB.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But breathing clean air isn’t the same thing as meeting federal air requirements, he said, which carries legal consequences: “If there weren’t such significant repercussions for not attaining, like the potential loss of federal highway funds and so on, then there wouldn’t be that pressure on air districts and CARB to really take full advantage of exceptional events.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michigan regulators reckoned they spent 250 hours writing last year’s exceptional event demonstration — but declined to provide a cost estimate.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘It still happened’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In July, the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center and the Sierra Club \u003ca href=\"https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-07/23-3583_Documents.pdf\">sued (PDF) \u003c/a>the EPA over its decision to move Detroit back into attainment. A successful lawsuit could force regulators to reimpose the controls they drafted. It would also require them to be more transparent about Detroit’s air quality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Excluding data to say that the air is clean is a “disservice to the public and the community,” said Democratic U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who represents Detroit. “Either we’re for addressing the climate crisis or we’re not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11964687\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11964687\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A Black man wearing a cap and t-shirt sits in a chair looking to the side.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/TheGuardian_Stellantis__30-2-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shobe has his own air monitor on his porch. \u003ccite>(Brittany Greeson/The Guardian)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Tlaib argues that the federal government should do better at counting the cumulative impacts of pollution. “I want those that are making these decisions and these exceptions and carve-outs to know that jobs don’t cure cancer,” she said. “They don’t stop the increase of asthma among our children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michigan officials didn’t comment, but pointed to a recently published blog post where the department of environment, Great Lakes, and energy \u003ca href=\"https://www.michigan.gov/egle/newsroom/mi-environment/2023/08/28/wildfire-smoke-and-pollution-a-primer-on-michigans-attainment-status\">wrote\u003c/a> that it “remains to be seen” whether the state will apply for more exemptions this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In southeast Detroit, Robert Shobe has his own air monitor on his porch. He trusts it, he said, regardless of what the official numbers say about two smoggy days last June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It still happened,” he said. The policies don’t make sense to him; he said it’s wrong “that they can have a way to take away something that you have documentation of.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m a throwaway, I’m in a sacrifice zone,” he said. “We complain, we file complaints, we’re doing everything we can to fight for ourselves, and they hide behind loopholes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Smoke, Screened: The Clean Air Act’s Dirty Secret is a collaboration of The California Newsroom, MuckRock and \u003c/em>The Guardian\u003cem>. Molly Peterson is a reporter for The California Newsroom. Dillon Bergin is a data reporter for MuckRock. Andrew Witherspoon is a data reporter for \u003c/em>The Guardian\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Welcome to Bumpass Hell, a Bubbling, Stinky Sliver of 'California's Yellowstone'",
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"content": "\u003cp>Lassen Volcanic National Park, sometimes called “California’s Yellowstone” for its geothermal activity, is a gorgeous landscape of volcanic peaks about a four hour drive from San Francisco. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Cody Harwood, a visitor from San Diego\"]‘It’s very surreal, honestly. It’s just like this barren hellscape and it smells like eggs.”[/pullquote] The park is snow-covered in winter and filled with meadows of colorful wildflowers in the summer. While the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/lavo/learn/nature/dixie-fire.htm\">Dixie Fire\u003c/a> charred much of the landscape in 2021, parts of the park are still green and fresh, home to hemlock and whitebark pine trees, birds and yellow-winged grasshoppers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11963645\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 540px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11963645\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/pools-range-in-color-from-greyish-brown-to-aqua.jpg\" alt=\"A view of different pools of water from the overlook. Trees in a landscape with blue sky in the background. \" width=\"540\" height=\"720\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/pools-range-in-color-from-greyish-brown-to-aqua.jpg 540w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/pools-range-in-color-from-greyish-brown-to-aqua-160x213.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pools range in color from greyish-brown to aqua along the Bumpass trail. \u003ccite>(Katherine Monahan/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And other parts look more like Mars, or … maybe, hell. The most famous, known for its \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs101-02/\">bubbling mud pots and steaming vents\u003c/a>, is called Bumpass Hell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s not pronounced “Bump Ass,” more like “Bump Us.” It’s named after mountaineer \u003ca href=\"https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=146201\">Kendall Vanhook Bumpass\u003c/a>, who held a mineral claim here in the 1860s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11963624\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 160px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11963624 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Bumpass-qut-160x238.jpg\" alt=\"Old black and white photo of a man with a beard.\" width=\"160\" height=\"238\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Bumpass-qut-160x238.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Bumpass-qut-800x1189.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Bumpass-qut.jpg 847w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mountaineer Kendall Vanhook Bumpass held a mineral claim for the area in the 1860s. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Karen Haner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1865, Bumpass brought a group of visitors out to see the surreal landscape. And while showing them around, he stepped through the crust … into a nearly 240°F, highly acidic mud pot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to park ranger Shanda Ochs, his companions pulled him out and dragged him to a nearby patch of snow, which they packed around his boiled leg. Still, it ended up having to be amputated. So the region became known as his “hell.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Not a good day for Mr. Kendall Bumpass,” said Ochs, who has spent years greeting modern-day tourists and encouraging them to stay on the boardwalk built above the bubbling pools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She explains that the rain and snow that falls in the winter seeps down toward a \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2017/5022/k2/sir20175022k2.pdf\">magma chamber (PDF)\u003c/a> about 5 miles underground. The water then heats up and rises back to the surface — escaping as boiling pools and hissing steam vents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trail to Bumpass Hell starts near a sapphire lake at the base of Lassen Peak. For the first mile or so of the hike, the mountain air can be fresh and bracing, spiced with pine. Jagged peaks ring the horizon. Chipmunks scamper across the trail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then comes the smell of sulfur and, from an overlook, you see the first view of a white, barren, steaming landscape, perforated with murky pools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s like another world,” said visitor Marilyn Steinberg, sitting on a bench, marveling at the thick, sulfuric mist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11963619\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11963619\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/sulphuric-acid-decomposes-the-rock-to-form-white-clay.jpg\" alt=\"A Mars-like landscape in the foreground with blue sky, green trees and steam.\" width=\"720\" height=\"540\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/sulphuric-acid-decomposes-the-rock-to-form-white-clay.jpg 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/sulphuric-acid-decomposes-the-rock-to-form-white-clay-160x120.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lassen Volcanic National Park is sometimes called ‘California’s Yellowstone.’ \u003ccite>(Katherine Monahan/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Up close, the smelly, muddy pools churn and simmer. Signs featuring gruesome photos of blistery burns, or stick figures plummeting into chasms of lava, warn visitors to stay on the boardwalk. Clearly the pools are no place for humans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But microscopic single-celled organisms called extremophiles love it here. They use sulfur for energy, and convert it into sulfuric acid, which is basically battery acid. That eats through the rocks, and bubbles out into a stinky white creek running next to us. It’s carrying sheets of ghostly white algae, another lifeform that actually likes this heat and acid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s very surreal, honestly,” said Cody Harwood, visiting from San Diego. “It’s just like this barren hellscape and it smells like eggs.”[aside tag=\"hiking, hidden-gems\" label=\"More Related Stories\"]As the sulfuric acid reacts with the rocks in the ground, new brightly colored minerals form. Iron pyrite makes a shiny patch of froth, floating on an aqua pool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When one of the simmering pools bubbles away, it leaves behind a steam vent. The biggest one, called Big Boiler, can heat up to more than 300 degrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists expect that this volatile region will erupt again, but nobody knows when. Meanwhile, if you visit Lassen Volcanic National Park, you can get right up close and hear the bubbling sounds of geology at work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Lassen Volcanic National Park, sometimes called “California’s Yellowstone” for its geothermal activity, is a gorgeous landscape of volcanic peaks about a four hour drive from San Francisco. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp> The park is snow-covered in winter and filled with meadows of colorful wildflowers in the summer. While the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/lavo/learn/nature/dixie-fire.htm\">Dixie Fire\u003c/a> charred much of the landscape in 2021, parts of the park are still green and fresh, home to hemlock and whitebark pine trees, birds and yellow-winged grasshoppers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11963645\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 540px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11963645\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/pools-range-in-color-from-greyish-brown-to-aqua.jpg\" alt=\"A view of different pools of water from the overlook. Trees in a landscape with blue sky in the background. \" width=\"540\" height=\"720\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/pools-range-in-color-from-greyish-brown-to-aqua.jpg 540w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/pools-range-in-color-from-greyish-brown-to-aqua-160x213.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pools range in color from greyish-brown to aqua along the Bumpass trail. \u003ccite>(Katherine Monahan/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And other parts look more like Mars, or … maybe, hell. The most famous, known for its \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs101-02/\">bubbling mud pots and steaming vents\u003c/a>, is called Bumpass Hell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s not pronounced “Bump Ass,” more like “Bump Us.” It’s named after mountaineer \u003ca href=\"https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=146201\">Kendall Vanhook Bumpass\u003c/a>, who held a mineral claim here in the 1860s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11963624\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 160px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11963624 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Bumpass-qut-160x238.jpg\" alt=\"Old black and white photo of a man with a beard.\" width=\"160\" height=\"238\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Bumpass-qut-160x238.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Bumpass-qut-800x1189.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/Bumpass-qut.jpg 847w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mountaineer Kendall Vanhook Bumpass held a mineral claim for the area in the 1860s. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Karen Haner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1865, Bumpass brought a group of visitors out to see the surreal landscape. And while showing them around, he stepped through the crust … into a nearly 240°F, highly acidic mud pot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to park ranger Shanda Ochs, his companions pulled him out and dragged him to a nearby patch of snow, which they packed around his boiled leg. Still, it ended up having to be amputated. So the region became known as his “hell.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Not a good day for Mr. Kendall Bumpass,” said Ochs, who has spent years greeting modern-day tourists and encouraging them to stay on the boardwalk built above the bubbling pools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She explains that the rain and snow that falls in the winter seeps down toward a \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2017/5022/k2/sir20175022k2.pdf\">magma chamber (PDF)\u003c/a> about 5 miles underground. The water then heats up and rises back to the surface — escaping as boiling pools and hissing steam vents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trail to Bumpass Hell starts near a sapphire lake at the base of Lassen Peak. For the first mile or so of the hike, the mountain air can be fresh and bracing, spiced with pine. Jagged peaks ring the horizon. Chipmunks scamper across the trail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then comes the smell of sulfur and, from an overlook, you see the first view of a white, barren, steaming landscape, perforated with murky pools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s like another world,” said visitor Marilyn Steinberg, sitting on a bench, marveling at the thick, sulfuric mist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11963619\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11963619\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/sulphuric-acid-decomposes-the-rock-to-form-white-clay.jpg\" alt=\"A Mars-like landscape in the foreground with blue sky, green trees and steam.\" width=\"720\" height=\"540\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/sulphuric-acid-decomposes-the-rock-to-form-white-clay.jpg 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/sulphuric-acid-decomposes-the-rock-to-form-white-clay-160x120.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lassen Volcanic National Park is sometimes called ‘California’s Yellowstone.’ \u003ccite>(Katherine Monahan/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Up close, the smelly, muddy pools churn and simmer. Signs featuring gruesome photos of blistery burns, or stick figures plummeting into chasms of lava, warn visitors to stay on the boardwalk. Clearly the pools are no place for humans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But microscopic single-celled organisms called extremophiles love it here. They use sulfur for energy, and convert it into sulfuric acid, which is basically battery acid. That eats through the rocks, and bubbles out into a stinky white creek running next to us. It’s carrying sheets of ghostly white algae, another lifeform that actually likes this heat and acid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s very surreal, honestly,” said Cody Harwood, visiting from San Diego. “It’s just like this barren hellscape and it smells like eggs.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Getting a federal tax credit for buying an electric vehicle is about to get a lot easier — or at least, a lot faster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Starting in January, EV car shoppers won’t have to wait until tax season to pocket the incentive, worth up to $7,500. Instead, the credit will be available as cash in hand on the day of purchase — and it’ll be available regardless of the size of a customer’s tax bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s how Congress wanted these incentives to work when they passed them as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. But when it was rolled out last year, it still required EV buyers to claim their credit when they filed their taxes, a more burdensome route. That’s because the IRS needed time to come up with a new system to make the credits work as point-of-sale rebates instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That new system to claim the credit was \u003ca href=\"https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1783\">announced Friday\u003c/a>. Here’s what to know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 class=\"edTag\">It’s all meant to happen at the dealership\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>All the requirements for qualifying for the tax credit still apply — for both EV buyers and automakers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"Related Stories\" postID=\"news_11960500,news_11944855,news_11956089\"]That means there’s still an income cap for buyers and there are limits to how much cars can cost to qualify for the credit. And not all models from automakers will qualify because of complex rules about how the cars are produced, including where the battery components come from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for buyers who qualify, actually accessing the credit will be a matter of extra paperwork at the dealership, instead of a monthslong wait for savings delivered through the tax filing process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dealers will register with the IRS and confirm that a vehicle qualifies for the tax credit, using the vehicle identification number.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That addresses one major customer concern. As of now, buyers have to do a lot of homework to figure out whether an EV they want to buy would qualify for a tax credit — navigating through a myriad of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/04/15/1169763545/electric-cars-vehicles-tax-credit-climate-bill\">complicated and shifting rules\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 class=\"edTag\">Delivering money faster — and to more people\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Buyers will also now have the option to get the credit instantly instead of waiting for the next year’s tax season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those purchasing an EV would need to attest that they meet the \u003ca href=\"https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/credits-for-new-clean-vehicles-purchased-in-2023-or-after\">individual requirements\u003c/a> — like that they’re purchasing the vehicle for personal use, they’re not a dependent on anyone’s taxes, and they’re under the income limit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then they’d transfer the tax credit to the dealership, and in exchange, the dealer will either give them that much in cash or as a down payment toward the vehicle. The dealer will submit documentation to the IRS, and the IRS says dealers will be reimbursed “promptly” — within 72 hours or so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Significantly, a buyer taking the credit at the dealership can get it regardless of what their tax bill is that year. Previously, a buyer would need to owe $7,500 in taxes in a given year to get the full benefit of the credit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That functioned like an income \u003cem>minimum\u003c/em>, since many low- and middle-income families owe less than that in taxes. It was also just another headache for people trying to figure out how much the credit was actually worth to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, even families with no tax liability at all can get the tax credit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, tax credits for \u003cem>used\u003c/em> electric vehicles (worth 30% of the price of the vehicle, up to $4,000) will also be available at the point of sale, through the same system of transferring the credit to the dealership. There is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/used-clean-vehicle-credit\">lower income cap\u003c/a> for that program, and some additional criteria for the vehicles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11963696\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1600px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11963696\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/gettyimages-1242546341_wide-eb9350bfe7e2461949ec77b0b0e3272c5419f8e0-s1600-c85-copy.jpg\" alt=\"Politicians, male and female, applaud as they stand around an older white man in a blue suit putting on a mask as he looks down at a document on a desk with the presidential emblem on the front and American flags behind.\" width=\"1600\" height=\"899\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/gettyimages-1242546341_wide-eb9350bfe7e2461949ec77b0b0e3272c5419f8e0-s1600-c85-copy.jpg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/gettyimages-1242546341_wide-eb9350bfe7e2461949ec77b0b0e3272c5419f8e0-s1600-c85-copy-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/gettyimages-1242546341_wide-eb9350bfe7e2461949ec77b0b0e3272c5419f8e0-s1600-c85-copy-1020x573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/gettyimages-1242546341_wide-eb9350bfe7e2461949ec77b0b0e3272c5419f8e0-s1600-c85-copy-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/gettyimages-1242546341_wide-eb9350bfe7e2461949ec77b0b0e3272c5419f8e0-s1600-c85-copy-1536x863.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">President Biden puts on his mask after signing the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on Aug. 16, 2022. The massive law included a complicated tax credit for electric vehicles. \u003ccite>(Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2 class=\"edTag\">There are caveats, though\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Things can still go wrong. The IRS says there are provisions in place to prevent fraud and deception on the part of dealerships, and dealers can only participate in this program if they’re current on their own taxes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And there’s one concrete situation where taxpayers may need to give back the credit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Buyers can qualify under the income cap using either the current year’s income or the previous year’s, whichever is lower. If it turns out their income was over the cap in \u003cem>both \u003c/em>years, and they already received the tax credit through a dealership, they would need to repay the tax credit to the IRS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The income limits for a new vehicle are $150,000 adjusted gross income for an individual, $225,000 for a head of household and $300,000 for a married couples filing jointly or surviving spouses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a used vehicle, the income caps are $75,000 for an individual, $112,500 for heads of households, and $150,000 for married couples filing jointly or surviving spouses.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 class=\"edTag\">The new system could make a big difference\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Though this will simplify things for EV shoppers, the tax credits still remain complicated as the government juggles both encouraging people to buy EVs while also pushing car companies to move more of their supply chains to the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a point-of-sale rebate should at least make the credits less of a guessing and waiting game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The changes “will make a tremendous difference,” says Elizabeth Krear, the vice president of the electric vehicle practice at auto data giant JD Power. “That’s $7,500 right there at the time of the transaction — versus having to finance at a higher price, which increases the monthly payments, and then waiting for that tax rebate down the line sometime in April.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Starting January, electric car shoppers will receive up to $7,500 cash-in-hand on the day they purchase an EV, no longer having to wait for a tax rebate. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Getting a federal tax credit for buying an electric vehicle is about to get a lot easier — or at least, a lot faster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Starting in January, EV car shoppers won’t have to wait until tax season to pocket the incentive, worth up to $7,500. Instead, the credit will be available as cash in hand on the day of purchase — and it’ll be available regardless of the size of a customer’s tax bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s how Congress wanted these incentives to work when they passed them as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. But when it was rolled out last year, it still required EV buyers to claim their credit when they filed their taxes, a more burdensome route. That’s because the IRS needed time to come up with a new system to make the credits work as point-of-sale rebates instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That new system to claim the credit was \u003ca href=\"https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1783\">announced Friday\u003c/a>. Here’s what to know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 class=\"edTag\">It’s all meant to happen at the dealership\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>All the requirements for qualifying for the tax credit still apply — for both EV buyers and automakers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>That means there’s still an income cap for buyers and there are limits to how much cars can cost to qualify for the credit. And not all models from automakers will qualify because of complex rules about how the cars are produced, including where the battery components come from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for buyers who qualify, actually accessing the credit will be a matter of extra paperwork at the dealership, instead of a monthslong wait for savings delivered through the tax filing process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dealers will register with the IRS and confirm that a vehicle qualifies for the tax credit, using the vehicle identification number.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That addresses one major customer concern. As of now, buyers have to do a lot of homework to figure out whether an EV they want to buy would qualify for a tax credit — navigating through a myriad of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/04/15/1169763545/electric-cars-vehicles-tax-credit-climate-bill\">complicated and shifting rules\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 class=\"edTag\">Delivering money faster — and to more people\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Buyers will also now have the option to get the credit instantly instead of waiting for the next year’s tax season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those purchasing an EV would need to attest that they meet the \u003ca href=\"https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/credits-for-new-clean-vehicles-purchased-in-2023-or-after\">individual requirements\u003c/a> — like that they’re purchasing the vehicle for personal use, they’re not a dependent on anyone’s taxes, and they’re under the income limit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then they’d transfer the tax credit to the dealership, and in exchange, the dealer will either give them that much in cash or as a down payment toward the vehicle. The dealer will submit documentation to the IRS, and the IRS says dealers will be reimbursed “promptly” — within 72 hours or so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Significantly, a buyer taking the credit at the dealership can get it regardless of what their tax bill is that year. Previously, a buyer would need to owe $7,500 in taxes in a given year to get the full benefit of the credit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That functioned like an income \u003cem>minimum\u003c/em>, since many low- and middle-income families owe less than that in taxes. It was also just another headache for people trying to figure out how much the credit was actually worth to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, even families with no tax liability at all can get the tax credit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, tax credits for \u003cem>used\u003c/em> electric vehicles (worth 30% of the price of the vehicle, up to $4,000) will also be available at the point of sale, through the same system of transferring the credit to the dealership. There is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/used-clean-vehicle-credit\">lower income cap\u003c/a> for that program, and some additional criteria for the vehicles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11963696\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1600px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11963696\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/gettyimages-1242546341_wide-eb9350bfe7e2461949ec77b0b0e3272c5419f8e0-s1600-c85-copy.jpg\" alt=\"Politicians, male and female, applaud as they stand around an older white man in a blue suit putting on a mask as he looks down at a document on a desk with the presidential emblem on the front and American flags behind.\" width=\"1600\" height=\"899\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/gettyimages-1242546341_wide-eb9350bfe7e2461949ec77b0b0e3272c5419f8e0-s1600-c85-copy.jpg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/gettyimages-1242546341_wide-eb9350bfe7e2461949ec77b0b0e3272c5419f8e0-s1600-c85-copy-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/gettyimages-1242546341_wide-eb9350bfe7e2461949ec77b0b0e3272c5419f8e0-s1600-c85-copy-1020x573.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/gettyimages-1242546341_wide-eb9350bfe7e2461949ec77b0b0e3272c5419f8e0-s1600-c85-copy-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/10/gettyimages-1242546341_wide-eb9350bfe7e2461949ec77b0b0e3272c5419f8e0-s1600-c85-copy-1536x863.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">President Biden puts on his mask after signing the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on Aug. 16, 2022. The massive law included a complicated tax credit for electric vehicles. \u003ccite>(Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2 class=\"edTag\">There are caveats, though\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Things can still go wrong. The IRS says there are provisions in place to prevent fraud and deception on the part of dealerships, and dealers can only participate in this program if they’re current on their own taxes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And there’s one concrete situation where taxpayers may need to give back the credit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Buyers can qualify under the income cap using either the current year’s income or the previous year’s, whichever is lower. If it turns out their income was over the cap in \u003cem>both \u003c/em>years, and they already received the tax credit through a dealership, they would need to repay the tax credit to the IRS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The income limits for a new vehicle are $150,000 adjusted gross income for an individual, $225,000 for a head of household and $300,000 for a married couples filing jointly or surviving spouses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a used vehicle, the income caps are $75,000 for an individual, $112,500 for heads of households, and $150,000 for married couples filing jointly or surviving spouses.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 class=\"edTag\">The new system could make a big difference\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Though this will simplify things for EV shoppers, the tax credits still remain complicated as the government juggles both encouraging people to buy EVs while also pushing car companies to move more of their supply chains to the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a point-of-sale rebate should at least make the credits less of a guessing and waiting game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The changes “will make a tremendous difference,” says Elizabeth Krear, the vice president of the electric vehicle practice at auto data giant JD Power. “That’s $7,500 right there at the time of the transaction — versus having to finance at a higher price, which increases the monthly payments, and then waiting for that tax rebate down the line sometime in April.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "As Smoke Returns, Bay Area Air Quality Expected to Worsen Over Next Few Days",
"headTitle": "As Smoke Returns, Bay Area Air Quality Expected to Worsen Over Next Few Days | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Update, 9:30 a.m. Wednesday: \u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThe Bay Area Air Quality Management District upgraded its air quality advisory Wednesday morning to a Spare the Air Alert, which is in effect through Thursday due to continued impacts from wildfire smoke blowing into the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The alert bans the burning of wood or any solid fuel, both indoors and outdoors. Air quality across much of the Bay Area has degraded to mostly ‘unhealthy for sensitive groups’ and ‘unhealthy’ Air Quality Index (AQI) levels, \u003ca href=\"https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/files/communications-and-outreach/publications/news-releases/2023/2023_039_aqadvisoryupgrade_091923-pdf.pdf?la=en&rev=f8ccae09226d449992be1be9110cfcb0\">the air district said\u003c/a>, urging residents — especially children and people with respiratory conditions — to limit outdoor exposure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1930023/map-heres-your-daily-air-quality-report-for-the-bay-area\">\u003cem>Explore an updated Bay Area air quality map\u003c/em>.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Original story, 6 p.m. Tuesday:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nAir quality across most of the Bay Area took a nosedive Tuesday afternoon as smoke from wildfires burning in the far northwestern quadrant of the state crept into the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early Tuesday, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District \u003ca href=\"https://www.baaqmd.gov/news-and-events/page-resources/2023-news/091923-aq-advisory\">issued an air quality advisory through Wednesday\u003c/a> due to the smoke, and urged residents to remain cautious and limit their outdoor exposure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=science_1926793,science_1930023]“Wildfire smoke can be unpredictable,” Juan Romero, an air district spokesperson, told KQED. “So we tell people to take the precautions necessary to avoid exposure. If you smell the smoke, stay indoors with your windows and doors closed if you can.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Romero also recommended setting air conditioners to recirculate air, and said people with respiratory diseases like asthma should take extra care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By late Tuesday afternoon, as the smoke thickened, San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management said air quality had reached the “unhealthy for sensitive groups” threshold and \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/SF_emergency/status/1704285443720986688?s=20\">encouraged residents to wear face coverings when going outside\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 5 p.m., readings at official air monitoring sites in San Francisco and West Oakland had reached the red, “unhealthy” category, with PM2.5 indexes of 161 and 154, respectively.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A low-pressure system is expected to continue drawing smoke from the far-northern wildfires, with northerly and northeasterly winds carrying it down the coast as far south as Central California over the next few days, according to the National Weather Service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/NWSBayArea/status/1704242174064525672\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Numerous lightning strikes touched off the fires in mid-August, and have produced heavy smoke for weeks, creating occasionally unhealthy-to-hazardous air quality in northwestern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The biggest of those blazes is the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2023/8/15/smith-river-complex/\">Smith River Complex\u003c/a>, which began in Del Norte County and has since crossed into southern Oregon, burning a total of more than 140 square miles. Smoke from the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2023/8/16/happy-camp-complex\">Happy Camp Complex\u003c/a> in Siskiyou County, and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2022/8/5/six-rivers-srf-lightning-complex\">Six Rivers Complex\u003c/a> in Trinity and Humboldt counties — and from other fires in southern Oregon — is also being funneled down the coast and contributing to the current poor air quality in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s Natalia Navarro and Dan Brekke contributed to this story. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Update, 9:30 a.m. Wednesday: \u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThe Bay Area Air Quality Management District upgraded its air quality advisory Wednesday morning to a Spare the Air Alert, which is in effect through Thursday due to continued impacts from wildfire smoke blowing into the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The alert bans the burning of wood or any solid fuel, both indoors and outdoors. Air quality across much of the Bay Area has degraded to mostly ‘unhealthy for sensitive groups’ and ‘unhealthy’ Air Quality Index (AQI) levels, \u003ca href=\"https://www.baaqmd.gov/~/media/files/communications-and-outreach/publications/news-releases/2023/2023_039_aqadvisoryupgrade_091923-pdf.pdf?la=en&rev=f8ccae09226d449992be1be9110cfcb0\">the air district said\u003c/a>, urging residents — especially children and people with respiratory conditions — to limit outdoor exposure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1930023/map-heres-your-daily-air-quality-report-for-the-bay-area\">\u003cem>Explore an updated Bay Area air quality map\u003c/em>.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Original story, 6 p.m. Tuesday:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nAir quality across most of the Bay Area took a nosedive Tuesday afternoon as smoke from wildfires burning in the far northwestern quadrant of the state crept into the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early Tuesday, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District \u003ca href=\"https://www.baaqmd.gov/news-and-events/page-resources/2023-news/091923-aq-advisory\">issued an air quality advisory through Wednesday\u003c/a> due to the smoke, and urged residents to remain cautious and limit their outdoor exposure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Wildfire smoke can be unpredictable,” Juan Romero, an air district spokesperson, told KQED. “So we tell people to take the precautions necessary to avoid exposure. If you smell the smoke, stay indoors with your windows and doors closed if you can.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Romero also recommended setting air conditioners to recirculate air, and said people with respiratory diseases like asthma should take extra care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By late Tuesday afternoon, as the smoke thickened, San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management said air quality had reached the “unhealthy for sensitive groups” threshold and \u003ca href=\"https://x.com/SF_emergency/status/1704285443720986688?s=20\">encouraged residents to wear face coverings when going outside\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 5 p.m., readings at official air monitoring sites in San Francisco and West Oakland had reached the red, “unhealthy” category, with PM2.5 indexes of 161 and 154, respectively.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A low-pressure system is expected to continue drawing smoke from the far-northern wildfires, with northerly and northeasterly winds carrying it down the coast as far south as Central California over the next few days, according to the National Weather Service.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Numerous lightning strikes touched off the fires in mid-August, and have produced heavy smoke for weeks, creating occasionally unhealthy-to-hazardous air quality in northwestern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The biggest of those blazes is the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2023/8/15/smith-river-complex/\">Smith River Complex\u003c/a>, which began in Del Norte County and has since crossed into southern Oregon, burning a total of more than 140 square miles. Smoke from the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2023/8/16/happy-camp-complex\">Happy Camp Complex\u003c/a> in Siskiyou County, and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2022/8/5/six-rivers-srf-lightning-complex\">Six Rivers Complex\u003c/a> in Trinity and Humboldt counties — and from other fires in southern Oregon — is also being funneled down the coast and contributing to the current poor air quality in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s Natalia Navarro and Dan Brekke contributed to this story. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Gov. Gavin Newsom Says He Will Sign Climate-Focused Transparency Laws for Big Business",
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"content": "\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday that he plans to sign into law a pair of climate-focused bills intended to force major corporations to be more transparent about greenhouse gas emissions and the financial risks stemming from global warming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom’s announcement came during an out-of-state trip to New York’s \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/protest-climate-change-march-hot-warming-200f35470e1d6f34f238e9c3c3f7f137\">Climate Week\u003c/a>, where world leaders in business, politics and the arts are gathered to seek solutions for climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California lawmakers last week \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-climate-change-emissions-disclosure-reporting-companies-123fe15c840b82f960384cbe04f3d955\">passed legislation\u003c/a> requiring large businesses from oil and gas companies to retail giants to \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/politics-california-climate-and-environment-b7ad468c3cf16ef3c80e5a8be688e2e3\">disclose their direct greenhouse gas emissions\u003c/a> as well as those that come from activities like employee business travel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such disclosures are a “simple but intensely powerful driver of decarbonization,” said the bill’s author, state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This legislation will support those companies doing their part to tackle the climate crisis and create accountability for those that aren’t,” Wiener said in a statement Sunday applauding Newsom’s decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the law, thousands of public and private businesses that operate in California and make more than $1 billion annually will have to make the emissions disclosures. The goal is to increase transparency and nudge companies to evaluate how they can cut their carbon emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco)\"]‘This legislation will support those companies doing their part to tackle the climate crisis and create accountability for those that aren’t.’[/pullquote]\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-legislature-candy-cannabis-newsom-59761b6865f4c916cb752d3978524a8e\">The second bill\u003c/a> approved last week by the state Assembly requires companies making more than $500 million annually to disclose what financial risks climate change poses to their businesses and how they plan to address those risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Henry Stern, a Democrat from Los Angeles who introduced the legislation, said the information would be useful for individuals and lawmakers when making public and private investment decisions. The bill was changed recently to require companies to begin reporting the information in 2026, instead of 2024, and mandate that they report every other year, instead of annually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom, a Democrat, said he wants California to lead the nation in addressing the climate crisis. “We need to exercise not just our formal authority, but we need to share our moral authority more abundantly,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/climate-oil-gas-california-lawsuit-newsom-212d6d9873352f28094173a1974e3d90\">Newsom’s office announced Saturday\u003c/a> that California \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11961542/it-is-time-they-pay-california-sues-big-oil-over-decades-of-damage-and-deception\">has filed a lawsuit\u003c/a> against some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, claiming they deceived the public about the risks of fossil fuels now faulted for climate change-related storms and wildfires that caused billions of dollars in damage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The civil lawsuit filed in state Superior Court in San Francisco also seeks the creation of a fund — financed by the companies — to pay for recovery efforts following devastating storms and fires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday that he plans to sign into law a pair of climate-focused bills intended to force major corporations to be more transparent about greenhouse gas emissions and the financial risks stemming from global warming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom’s announcement came during an out-of-state trip to New York’s \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/protest-climate-change-march-hot-warming-200f35470e1d6f34f238e9c3c3f7f137\">Climate Week\u003c/a>, where world leaders in business, politics and the arts are gathered to seek solutions for climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California lawmakers last week \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-climate-change-emissions-disclosure-reporting-companies-123fe15c840b82f960384cbe04f3d955\">passed legislation\u003c/a> requiring large businesses from oil and gas companies to retail giants to \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/politics-california-climate-and-environment-b7ad468c3cf16ef3c80e5a8be688e2e3\">disclose their direct greenhouse gas emissions\u003c/a> as well as those that come from activities like employee business travel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such disclosures are a “simple but intensely powerful driver of decarbonization,” said the bill’s author, state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This legislation will support those companies doing their part to tackle the climate crisis and create accountability for those that aren’t,” Wiener said in a statement Sunday applauding Newsom’s decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the law, thousands of public and private businesses that operate in California and make more than $1 billion annually will have to make the emissions disclosures. The goal is to increase transparency and nudge companies to evaluate how they can cut their carbon emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-legislature-candy-cannabis-newsom-59761b6865f4c916cb752d3978524a8e\">The second bill\u003c/a> approved last week by the state Assembly requires companies making more than $500 million annually to disclose what financial risks climate change poses to their businesses and how they plan to address those risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Henry Stern, a Democrat from Los Angeles who introduced the legislation, said the information would be useful for individuals and lawmakers when making public and private investment decisions. The bill was changed recently to require companies to begin reporting the information in 2026, instead of 2024, and mandate that they report every other year, instead of annually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom, a Democrat, said he wants California to lead the nation in addressing the climate crisis. “We need to exercise not just our formal authority, but we need to share our moral authority more abundantly,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/climate-oil-gas-california-lawsuit-newsom-212d6d9873352f28094173a1974e3d90\">Newsom’s office announced Saturday\u003c/a> that California \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11961542/it-is-time-they-pay-california-sues-big-oil-over-decades-of-damage-and-deception\">has filed a lawsuit\u003c/a> against some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, claiming they deceived the public about the risks of fossil fuels now faulted for climate change-related storms and wildfires that caused billions of dollars in damage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The civil lawsuit filed in state Superior Court in San Francisco also seeks the creation of a fund — financed by the companies — to pay for recovery efforts following devastating storms and fires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated 5 p.m. Sunday\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/09/16/people-of-the-state-of-california-v-big-oil/\">announced Saturday\u003c/a> that California is suing five of the world’s largest oil companies for cover-up, deception and damages that they say have cost Californians billions of dollars in environmental and health impacts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oil and gas executives have known for decades about the dangers of the fossil fuels they produce,” stated a press release from Newsom’s office. In the press release, Newsom accused the companies of spreading disinformation on climate change in order to protect profits over the last 50 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exxon, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and BP — along with the largest domestic oil industry lobby group, American Petroleum Institute — are all named as defendants in the suit, which was filed in San Francisco Superior Court on Friday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The announcement Saturday is the latest in \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/us-cities-states-sue-big-oil-climate-change-lawsuits/\">a slew of lawsuits brought against the oil industry in states across the U.S.\u003c/a>, including similar suits in Colorado, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and even Puerto Rico.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Gov. Gavin Newsom\"]‘For more than 50 years, Big Oil has been lying to us — covering up the fact that they’ve long known how dangerous the fossil fuels they produce are for our planet.’[/pullquote]Michael Wara, who is a senior research scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment and director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford Law School, said it was unsurprising that the suit was filed in state court, which he says is generally “more favorable on issues of climate litigation” towards the plaintiffs than federal courts have been. He expects the oil companies will likely try to move the case to a federal court on some of the claims, where the oil companies would expect to have a more favorable outcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think this is kind of an acceleration and amplification of the broader attempts to hold oil companies to account for their deceptive marketing and advocacy campaigns around climate change,” said Wara in an interview with KQED. “And the more that we learn about that, the more it becomes apparent that they have been deceptive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is attempting to hold the oil companies responsible for what it says are their impacts on the environment, human health and Californians’ livelihoods. The state also seeks to prohibit the companies from “engaging in further pollution and destruction” of California communities and natural resources, and insists that they they pay financial penalties for “lying to the public” and ordered to “immediately stop … ongoing efforts to deceive or misinform about their catastrophic impacts.” The state also seeks punitive damages “to punish these companies for their misconduct.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For more than 50 years, Big Oil has been lying to us — covering up the fact that they’ve long known how dangerous the fossil fuels they produce are for our planet,” Gov. Newsom said in the statement. “It has been decades of damage and deception. Wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells. California taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill. California is taking action to hold big polluters accountable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the statement, Attorney General Bonta said “Enough is enough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With our lawsuit, California becomes the largest geographic area and the largest economy to take these giant oil companies to court,” he said. “From extreme heat to drought and water shortages, the climate crisis they have caused is undeniable. It is time they pay to abate the harm they have caused.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>News of the lawsuit triggered a flurry of statements from environmental groups welcoming the news.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With this historic lawsuit, Gov. Newsom and Attorney General Bonta are providing the climate leadership the world so desperately needs,” said Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, in a statement released Saturday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label=\"Related Stories\" postID=\"news_11960699,news_11923242,news_11957321\"]Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, released a statement saying, “Whether it’s fires, droughts, extreme heat, or sea-level rise, Californians have been living in a climate emergency caused by the fossil fuel industry, and now the state is taking decisive action to make those polluters pay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jamie Henn, founder of Fossil Free Media, said “Climate change isn’t just a tragedy, it’s a crime. Fossil fuel companies knew, they lied, and now it’s time to make them pay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patrick Parenteau, professor of environmental law at Vermont Law and Graduate School, says the lawsuit is a straightforward tort case, alleging that the oil companies lied about the dangers they knew their products were causing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is no different than cigarette companies lying about the dangers of smoking, or paint companies lying about the dangers of lead-based paint, or chemical companies lying about the dangers of PFAS in Teflon-coated frying pans,” said Parenteau in an email to KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an emailed statement to KQED late Saturday, a spokesperson for Chevron said that climate change is a global problem that required coordinated international policy response rather than “piecemeal litigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California has long been a leading promoter of oil and gas development. Its local courts have no constructive or constitutionally permissible role in crafting global energy policy,” Chevron said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an email statement on Sunday morning, a Shell spokesperson wrote: “The Shell Group’s position on climate change has been a matter of public record for decades. We agree that action is needed now on climate change, and we fully support the need for society to transition to a lower-carbon future. As we supply vital energy the world needs today, we continue to reduce our emissions and help customers reduce theirs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The email also added: “We do not believe the courtroom is the right venue to address climate change, but that smart policy from government and action from all sectors is the appropriate way to reach solutions and drive progress.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scott Lauermann, media relations manager for the American Petroleum Institute, told KQED in a statement that “This ongoing, coordinated campaign to wage meritless, politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry and its workers is nothing more than a distraction from important national conversations and an enormous waste of California taxpayer resources. Climate policy is for Congress to debate and decide, not the court system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patrick Parenteau, a professor of law emeritus at Vermont Law & Graduate School told KQED that in order to win the case, California needs to prove that the alleged lies caused real damage. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They have to connect the lie to the damage, so they have to say if you hadn’t lied we would be in a better position than we are today,” he said. “That’s where the cases are going to be decided.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parenteau said that “everybody knows that these cases aren’t going to solve climate change,” but “the fundamental rule of environmental law is [that the] polluter pays. In the end, that’s all these cases are about.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s Lakshmi Sarah, Kevin Stark, Azul Dahlstrom Eckman and Attila Pelit contributed to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Saturday they are suing ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips and the American Petroleum Institute for 'disinformation.'",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Updated 5 p.m. Sunday\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/09/16/people-of-the-state-of-california-v-big-oil/\">announced Saturday\u003c/a> that California is suing five of the world’s largest oil companies for cover-up, deception and damages that they say have cost Californians billions of dollars in environmental and health impacts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oil and gas executives have known for decades about the dangers of the fossil fuels they produce,” stated a press release from Newsom’s office. In the press release, Newsom accused the companies of spreading disinformation on climate change in order to protect profits over the last 50 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exxon, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and BP — along with the largest domestic oil industry lobby group, American Petroleum Institute — are all named as defendants in the suit, which was filed in San Francisco Superior Court on Friday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The announcement Saturday is the latest in \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/us-cities-states-sue-big-oil-climate-change-lawsuits/\">a slew of lawsuits brought against the oil industry in states across the U.S.\u003c/a>, including similar suits in Colorado, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and even Puerto Rico.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Michael Wara, who is a senior research scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment and director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford Law School, said it was unsurprising that the suit was filed in state court, which he says is generally “more favorable on issues of climate litigation” towards the plaintiffs than federal courts have been. He expects the oil companies will likely try to move the case to a federal court on some of the claims, where the oil companies would expect to have a more favorable outcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think this is kind of an acceleration and amplification of the broader attempts to hold oil companies to account for their deceptive marketing and advocacy campaigns around climate change,” said Wara in an interview with KQED. “And the more that we learn about that, the more it becomes apparent that they have been deceptive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is attempting to hold the oil companies responsible for what it says are their impacts on the environment, human health and Californians’ livelihoods. The state also seeks to prohibit the companies from “engaging in further pollution and destruction” of California communities and natural resources, and insists that they they pay financial penalties for “lying to the public” and ordered to “immediately stop … ongoing efforts to deceive or misinform about their catastrophic impacts.” The state also seeks punitive damages “to punish these companies for their misconduct.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For more than 50 years, Big Oil has been lying to us — covering up the fact that they’ve long known how dangerous the fossil fuels they produce are for our planet,” Gov. Newsom said in the statement. “It has been decades of damage and deception. Wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells. California taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill. California is taking action to hold big polluters accountable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the statement, Attorney General Bonta said “Enough is enough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With our lawsuit, California becomes the largest geographic area and the largest economy to take these giant oil companies to court,” he said. “From extreme heat to drought and water shortages, the climate crisis they have caused is undeniable. It is time they pay to abate the harm they have caused.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>News of the lawsuit triggered a flurry of statements from environmental groups welcoming the news.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With this historic lawsuit, Gov. Newsom and Attorney General Bonta are providing the climate leadership the world so desperately needs,” said Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, in a statement released Saturday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, released a statement saying, “Whether it’s fires, droughts, extreme heat, or sea-level rise, Californians have been living in a climate emergency caused by the fossil fuel industry, and now the state is taking decisive action to make those polluters pay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jamie Henn, founder of Fossil Free Media, said “Climate change isn’t just a tragedy, it’s a crime. Fossil fuel companies knew, they lied, and now it’s time to make them pay.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patrick Parenteau, professor of environmental law at Vermont Law and Graduate School, says the lawsuit is a straightforward tort case, alleging that the oil companies lied about the dangers they knew their products were causing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is no different than cigarette companies lying about the dangers of smoking, or paint companies lying about the dangers of lead-based paint, or chemical companies lying about the dangers of PFAS in Teflon-coated frying pans,” said Parenteau in an email to KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an emailed statement to KQED late Saturday, a spokesperson for Chevron said that climate change is a global problem that required coordinated international policy response rather than “piecemeal litigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California has long been a leading promoter of oil and gas development. Its local courts have no constructive or constitutionally permissible role in crafting global energy policy,” Chevron said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an email statement on Sunday morning, a Shell spokesperson wrote: “The Shell Group’s position on climate change has been a matter of public record for decades. We agree that action is needed now on climate change, and we fully support the need for society to transition to a lower-carbon future. As we supply vital energy the world needs today, we continue to reduce our emissions and help customers reduce theirs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The email also added: “We do not believe the courtroom is the right venue to address climate change, but that smart policy from government and action from all sectors is the appropriate way to reach solutions and drive progress.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scott Lauermann, media relations manager for the American Petroleum Institute, told KQED in a statement that “This ongoing, coordinated campaign to wage meritless, politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry and its workers is nothing more than a distraction from important national conversations and an enormous waste of California taxpayer resources. Climate policy is for Congress to debate and decide, not the court system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patrick Parenteau, a professor of law emeritus at Vermont Law & Graduate School told KQED that in order to win the case, California needs to prove that the alleged lies caused real damage. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They have to connect the lie to the damage, so they have to say if you hadn’t lied we would be in a better position than we are today,” he said. “That’s where the cases are going to be decided.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parenteau said that “everybody knows that these cases aren’t going to solve climate change,” but “the fundamental rule of environmental law is [that the] polluter pays. In the end, that’s all these cases are about.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s Lakshmi Sarah, Kevin Stark, Azul Dahlstrom Eckman and Attila Pelit contributed to this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The California Legislature voted Thursday to give Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration permission to buy massive amounts of electricity, a move aimed at \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-941c5a94c7bc7b1f93e1ed4bf6560fd4\">avoiding blackouts\u003c/a> by shoring up the state’s power supply while jumpstarting the West Coast’s fledgling offshore wind industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Five companies paid roughly \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/business-california-united-states-government-rwe-ag-climate-and-environment-87f602496e34299f5429a3d8a67ae478\">$750 million\u003c/a> last year to lease areas off the California coast to build wind turbines. Collectively, those projects could generate enough electricity to power 3.5 million homes, helping the state avoid blackouts during extreme heat waves that have routinely strained the electrical grid of the nation’s most populous state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But so far, the state’s largest utility companies have not been willing to commit to buying power from projects like those because it would cost too much money and take too long to build. In addition to building the wind turbines, the projects will require improvements at the state’s ports and new power lines to transport the energy from the ocean to the land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a major, generational series of investments that need to happen, and there’s a real risk [that] it won’t if we can’t provide more certainty,” said Alex Jackson, director of the American Clean Power Association, which represents the companies trying to build the wind projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill would \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-blackouts-wind-geothermal-energy-fd6e382afd43c3e88d8a35a8dc22578f\">let the state buy the power\u003c/a>. The money would come from a surcharge imposed on Californians’ electricity bills. State regulators would decide how much this charge would be. Consumers would not pay it until the wind projects are up and running, likely several years from now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California already has among the highest electricity rates in the country. [pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Alex Jackson, director, American Clean Power Association\"]‘This is a major, generational series of investments that need to happen, and there’s a real risk [that] it won’t if we can’t provide more certainty.’[/pullquote] “This legislation … means that every single ratepayer in California, no matter where you live, is going to pay for this,” said Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle, who opposes the bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supporters argue the bill will save people money in the long run on their electric bills. California has a law requiring all of its electricity to come from renewable or non-carbon sources by 2045. To do that, supporters say the state will have to invest in offshore wind projects, which typically generate the most power at night when solar energy is not as abundant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supporters say it would be more efficient for these offshore wind projects to sell all of their electricity to the state instead of selling pieces of it to multiple utility companies, helping to control costs and keep rates lower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The biggest threat to us meeting our climate goals between now and 2045 are rate impacts to ratepayers,” Scott Wetch, a lobbyist representing various construction trade associations, told lawmakers in a recent public hearing. “[This bill] is the only way to bring down those costs on these large, complex, long lead time projects in order to minimize the rate impacts.” [aside postID=science_1983253 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/07/RS42448_GettyImages-94155086-qut-1020x680.jpg'] The bill gives the Department of Water Resources the authority to purchase the power — but not forever. Their authority would expire in 2035. Lawmakers would have to vote again to extend it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California has moved quickly to end its reliance on fossil fuels in recent years. State regulators have OK’d rules \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/technology-california-air-resources-board-climate-and-environment-dc75c11280f85a8ab134cf392497be68\">banning the sale\u003c/a> of most new gas-powered cars by 2035. But the state has struggled to maintain its clean energy values amid that transition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An extreme heat wave in 2020 overwhelmed the state’s power grid, leaving hundreds of thousands of homes in the dark for a few hours over two days. Similar heat waves in the following summers prompted regulators to ask consumers to use less energy when demand was at its peak in the early evenings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom and the state Legislature have since spent $3.3 billion to build a “strategic reliability reserve” that included purchasing \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/technology-california-sacramento-gavin-newsom-power-outages-0c520b790860fac7326cfdcdb4d3a785#:~:text=(AP)%20%E2%80%94%20A%20record%20heat,use%20of%20oil%20and%20gas.\">diesel-powered generators\u003c/a> and extending the life of some gas-fired power plants that were scheduled to retire. [aside label='More on Clean Energy' tag='clean-energy'] “There are things happening right now in energy policy that give me some pause about the efficacy of our strategy,” Democratic state Sen. Henry Stern lamented during a public hearing on the bill last week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State law requires utility companies to have enough energy to meet demand. If they don’t, the bill would require those companies to pay a penalty. The Newsom administration has said this will prevent utilities from relying too much on the strategic reliability reserve, which uses gas-powered generators that pollute the air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alice Reynolds, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, said the state has completed more than 100 projects that have added 9,000 megawatts of new clean energy in the past three years. The bill lawmakers approved on Wednesday also includes provisions to fast-track new electric transmission projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to act quickly and we need to really have all hands on deck,” Reynolds said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Gov. Gavin Newsom can now buy massive amounts of electricity, with a goal to prevent blackouts, and kickstart the West Coast’s fledging offshore wind industry.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The California Legislature voted Thursday to give Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration permission to buy massive amounts of electricity, a move aimed at \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-941c5a94c7bc7b1f93e1ed4bf6560fd4\">avoiding blackouts\u003c/a> by shoring up the state’s power supply while jumpstarting the West Coast’s fledgling offshore wind industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Five companies paid roughly \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/business-california-united-states-government-rwe-ag-climate-and-environment-87f602496e34299f5429a3d8a67ae478\">$750 million\u003c/a> last year to lease areas off the California coast to build wind turbines. Collectively, those projects could generate enough electricity to power 3.5 million homes, helping the state avoid blackouts during extreme heat waves that have routinely strained the electrical grid of the nation’s most populous state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But so far, the state’s largest utility companies have not been willing to commit to buying power from projects like those because it would cost too much money and take too long to build. In addition to building the wind turbines, the projects will require improvements at the state’s ports and new power lines to transport the energy from the ocean to the land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a major, generational series of investments that need to happen, and there’s a real risk [that] it won’t if we can’t provide more certainty,” said Alex Jackson, director of the American Clean Power Association, which represents the companies trying to build the wind projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill would \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-blackouts-wind-geothermal-energy-fd6e382afd43c3e88d8a35a8dc22578f\">let the state buy the power\u003c/a>. The money would come from a surcharge imposed on Californians’ electricity bills. State regulators would decide how much this charge would be. Consumers would not pay it until the wind projects are up and running, likely several years from now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California already has among the highest electricity rates in the country. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp> “This legislation … means that every single ratepayer in California, no matter where you live, is going to pay for this,” said Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle, who opposes the bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supporters argue the bill will save people money in the long run on their electric bills. California has a law requiring all of its electricity to come from renewable or non-carbon sources by 2045. To do that, supporters say the state will have to invest in offshore wind projects, which typically generate the most power at night when solar energy is not as abundant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Supporters say it would be more efficient for these offshore wind projects to sell all of their electricity to the state instead of selling pieces of it to multiple utility companies, helping to control costs and keep rates lower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The biggest threat to us meeting our climate goals between now and 2045 are rate impacts to ratepayers,” Scott Wetch, a lobbyist representing various construction trade associations, told lawmakers in a recent public hearing. “[This bill] is the only way to bring down those costs on these large, complex, long lead time projects in order to minimize the rate impacts.” \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp> The bill gives the Department of Water Resources the authority to purchase the power — but not forever. Their authority would expire in 2035. Lawmakers would have to vote again to extend it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California has moved quickly to end its reliance on fossil fuels in recent years. State regulators have OK’d rules \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/technology-california-air-resources-board-climate-and-environment-dc75c11280f85a8ab134cf392497be68\">banning the sale\u003c/a> of most new gas-powered cars by 2035. But the state has struggled to maintain its clean energy values amid that transition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An extreme heat wave in 2020 overwhelmed the state’s power grid, leaving hundreds of thousands of homes in the dark for a few hours over two days. Similar heat waves in the following summers prompted regulators to ask consumers to use less energy when demand was at its peak in the early evenings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newsom and the state Legislature have since spent $3.3 billion to build a “strategic reliability reserve” that included purchasing \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/technology-california-sacramento-gavin-newsom-power-outages-0c520b790860fac7326cfdcdb4d3a785#:~:text=(AP)%20%E2%80%94%20A%20record%20heat,use%20of%20oil%20and%20gas.\">diesel-powered generators\u003c/a> and extending the life of some gas-fired power plants that were scheduled to retire. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp> “There are things happening right now in energy policy that give me some pause about the efficacy of our strategy,” Democratic state Sen. Henry Stern lamented during a public hearing on the bill last week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State law requires utility companies to have enough energy to meet demand. If they don’t, the bill would require those companies to pay a penalty. The Newsom administration has said this will prevent utilities from relying too much on the strategic reliability reserve, which uses gas-powered generators that pollute the air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alice Reynolds, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, said the state has completed more than 100 projects that have added 9,000 megawatts of new clean energy in the past three years. The bill lawmakers approved on Wednesday also includes provisions to fast-track new electric transmission projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We need to act quickly and we need to really have all hands on deck,” Reynolds said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "From Chemicals in Food to Cannabis Cafes: California Lawmakers Slog Through Cascade of Bills Before End of Legislative Session",
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"content": "\u003cp>California lawmakers are working through hundreds of bills before the legislative session ends on Thursday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If approved, the bills go to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will have until Oct. 14 to decide whether to sign them into law, veto them or let them become law without his signature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state Legislature almost never overrides a veto from the governor, no matter what political party is in charge.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Chemicals in food\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Lawmakers on Tuesday voted to become the first state to ban four chemicals from processed food and drinks sold in California by 2027.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The chemicals — red dye no. 3, potassium bromate, brominated vegetable oil and propyl paraben — are still used in popular products like \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-candy-ingredient-ban-peeps-d7963c52b6213619672c6f50b32ca548\">Peeps\u003c/a>, the popular marshmallow chicks most associated with Easter.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Asm. Jesse Gabriel (D-San Fernando Valley)\"]‘It is unacceptable that the US is so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to food safety.’[/pullquote]Democratic Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, the author of the bill, said those chemicals have already been banned by the European Union and other countries because of scientific research linking them to health problems, including cancer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is unacceptable that the U.S. is so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to food safety,” Gabriel said. “This bill will not ban any foods or products — it simply will require food companies to make minor modifications to their recipes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An earlier version of the bill would also have banned titanium dioxide, which is used in Skittles. But amendments in the state Senate removed that chemical from the ban.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Disclosing financial risks of climate change\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The state Assembly approved a bill requiring companies making more than $500 million annually to disclose what financial risks climate change poses to their businesses and how they plan to address those risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Henry Stern, a Democrat from Los Angeles who introduced the legislation, said the information would be useful for individuals and lawmakers when making public and private investment decisions. The bill was changed recently to require companies to begin reporting the information in 2026, instead of 2024, and mandate that they report every other year, instead of annually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The changes would help make it more feasible for businesses to follow through with reporting requirements, said Anne DiGrazia, a spokesperson for Stern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill was among the biggest climate proposals in the state Legislature this year, collecting support from major companies including IKEA and Microsoft, as well as former California Air Resources Board Chair Mary D. Nichols.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Opponents of the bill say it would be too burdensome for companies and is premature. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/climate-business-environment-e55ae33115e6a9e1202673ab51745924\">could approve rules\u003c/a> requiring public companies to disclose their direct and indirect emissions, as well as how climate risk affects their business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposed California mandate would apply to more than 10,000 companies, according to Ceres, a policy group supporting it. The vote comes after the state Legislature sent another bill to Newsom that would require companies making more than $1 billion annually to \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-climate-change-emissions-disclosure-reporting-companies-123fe15c840b82f960384cbe04f3d955\">report their direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Climate change school curriculum\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Senate passed a bill that would require schools to teach students, from first grade through high school, about the causes and effects of climate change. The bill also would mandate lessons on how to mitigate and adapt to the effects of the changing climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proponents of the bill say lessons about climate change are already a part of school curricula in other countries including Italy and New Zealand. Oregon also introduced legislation this year to \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-education-school-oregon-united-states-376bed4c1b916bcf038ca9e89302401e\">mandate climate change lessons\u003c/a>, but the bill did not advance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would still need final approval in the Assembly before ending up on Newsom’s desk.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Cannabis cafes\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Legislature sent a bill to Newsom’s desk that could create more so-called “cannabis cafes,” inspired by establishments in Amsterdam where customers can socialize and purchase cannabis, coffee and other products.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Asm. Matt Haney (D-San Francisco)\"]‘There’s absolutely no good reason from an economic, health or safety standpoint that the state should make that illegal.’[/pullquote]The bill would allow local governments to give licenses to cannabis dispensaries to sell non-cannabis food, beverages and tickets to live music events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Democratic Assemblymember Matt Haney of San Francisco, who introduced the bill, said it would give a boost to small cannabis businesses. He said many people want to be able to socialize and listen to live music while consuming cannabis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s absolutely no good reason from an economic, health or safety standpoint that the state should make that illegal,” Haney said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>___\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Sophie Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. \u003ca href=\"https://www.reportforamerica.org/\">Report for America\u003c/a> is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>California lawmakers are working through hundreds of bills before the legislative session ends on Thursday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If approved, the bills go to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will have until Oct. 14 to decide whether to sign them into law, veto them or let them become law without his signature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state Legislature almost never overrides a veto from the governor, no matter what political party is in charge.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Chemicals in food\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Lawmakers on Tuesday voted to become the first state to ban four chemicals from processed food and drinks sold in California by 2027.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The chemicals — red dye no. 3, potassium bromate, brominated vegetable oil and propyl paraben — are still used in popular products like \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-candy-ingredient-ban-peeps-d7963c52b6213619672c6f50b32ca548\">Peeps\u003c/a>, the popular marshmallow chicks most associated with Easter.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Democratic Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, the author of the bill, said those chemicals have already been banned by the European Union and other countries because of scientific research linking them to health problems, including cancer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is unacceptable that the U.S. is so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to food safety,” Gabriel said. “This bill will not ban any foods or products — it simply will require food companies to make minor modifications to their recipes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An earlier version of the bill would also have banned titanium dioxide, which is used in Skittles. But amendments in the state Senate removed that chemical from the ban.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Disclosing financial risks of climate change\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The state Assembly approved a bill requiring companies making more than $500 million annually to disclose what financial risks climate change poses to their businesses and how they plan to address those risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Sen. Henry Stern, a Democrat from Los Angeles who introduced the legislation, said the information would be useful for individuals and lawmakers when making public and private investment decisions. The bill was changed recently to require companies to begin reporting the information in 2026, instead of 2024, and mandate that they report every other year, instead of annually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The changes would help make it more feasible for businesses to follow through with reporting requirements, said Anne DiGrazia, a spokesperson for Stern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bill was among the biggest climate proposals in the state Legislature this year, collecting support from major companies including IKEA and Microsoft, as well as former California Air Resources Board Chair Mary D. Nichols.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Opponents of the bill say it would be too burdensome for companies and is premature. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/climate-business-environment-e55ae33115e6a9e1202673ab51745924\">could approve rules\u003c/a> requiring public companies to disclose their direct and indirect emissions, as well as how climate risk affects their business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposed California mandate would apply to more than 10,000 companies, according to Ceres, a policy group supporting it. The vote comes after the state Legislature sent another bill to Newsom that would require companies making more than $1 billion annually to \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/california-climate-change-emissions-disclosure-reporting-companies-123fe15c840b82f960384cbe04f3d955\">report their direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Climate change school curriculum\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Senate passed a bill that would require schools to teach students, from first grade through high school, about the causes and effects of climate change. The bill also would mandate lessons on how to mitigate and adapt to the effects of the changing climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proponents of the bill say lessons about climate change are already a part of school curricula in other countries including Italy and New Zealand. Oregon also introduced legislation this year to \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-education-school-oregon-united-states-376bed4c1b916bcf038ca9e89302401e\">mandate climate change lessons\u003c/a>, but the bill did not advance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would still need final approval in the Assembly before ending up on Newsom’s desk.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Cannabis cafes\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Legislature sent a bill to Newsom’s desk that could create more so-called “cannabis cafes,” inspired by establishments in Amsterdam where customers can socialize and purchase cannabis, coffee and other products.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The bill would allow local governments to give licenses to cannabis dispensaries to sell non-cannabis food, beverages and tickets to live music events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Democratic Assemblymember Matt Haney of San Francisco, who introduced the bill, said it would give a boost to small cannabis businesses. He said many people want to be able to socialize and listen to live music while consuming cannabis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s absolutely no good reason from an economic, health or safety standpoint that the state should make that illegal,” Haney said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>___\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Sophie Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. \u003ca href=\"https://www.reportforamerica.org/\">Report for America\u003c/a> is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "oil-industry-sets-back-efforts-to-increase-fines-against-polluting-california-refineries-yet-again",
"title": "Oil Industry Blocks Effort to Increase Fines Against Polluting California Refineries … Again",
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"content": "\u003cp>California’s oil industry has once again quashed an attempt in the state Capitol to increase penalties on refineries that violate air quality laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the fourth time in a decade that the industry has successfully killed or delayed such an endeavor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The latest proposal was put on hold last week, just days before the Legislature finishes its work for the year on Sept. 14. Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), who authored the \u003ca href=\"https://legiscan.com/CA/bill/AB1465/2023\">bill\u003c/a>, said the move was prompted by concerns some lawmakers would vote against it because it wasn’t weakened enough to satisfy California’s main oil industry group, the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It became apparent that we were going to need more time to work on AB 1465 with our sponsor, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, and with opposition groups who engaged us on the possibility of additional amendments,” Wicks said in an email on Friday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>WSPA represents the oil companies that own all of the Bay Area’s petroleum refineries. The region’s Chevron, Valero, PBF, Marathon and Phillips 66 plants have for decades produced gasoline and jet fuels that have powered major components of the region’s transportation sector. But they have also received \u003ca href=\"https://www.baaqmd.gov/rules-and-compliance/compliance-assistance/notices-of-violations/novs-issued\">hundreds of notices of violations\u003c/a> from local air regulators in recent years, stemming from minor flaring incidents to severe accidents that forced nearby residents to stay indoors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those incidents prompted Wicks to propose tripling the maximum penalty amounts oil companies would pay when their refineries violate air quality regulations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Asm. Buffy Wicks at a July 11 hearing\"]‘This morning in Martinez, which I drive through on my way here, there was a toxic dust release. This is happening in our communities all the time.’[/pullquote]There are a variety of fine amounts refineries can face, but the general limit on those fines is currently $10,000. Environmentalists and some Bay Area elected leaders have described those penalties as part of the mere cost of doing business for companies like \u003ca href=\"https://chevroncorp.gcs-web.com/static-files/359d5f9b-5519-476e-976c-8ace50143c49\">Chevron, which earned $6 billion in the second quarter of this year\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wicks’ bill would increase the ceiling on fines to $30,000 per violation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But WSPA has opposed any attempts to crack down on air quality violations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And even before Wicks sidelined the bill last week, the industry group had already convinced legislators to significantly change the proposal several months ago by expanding its scope. Under the changes, the fines would also apply to dozens of industrial facilities that release chemicals into the air, including refineries, that are covered by Title V of the federal Clean Air Act. In the Bay Area there are \u003ca href=\"https://www.baaqmd.gov/permits/major-facility-review-title-v/title-v-permits\">dozens of such sites\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is no public policy rationale for singling out refineries,” wrote Shant Apekian, vice president of California policy and strategic affairs at WSPA, in a letter to Wicks in April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While that complaint arose this spring, lawmakers did not amend the bill until June — and not everyone was happy with the change. Several industry and public agency associations, including the California Association of Sanitation Agencies, urged legislators to vote “no” on the bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unlike refineries, which are privately held for-profit corporations, public wastewater agencies provide an essential public service and all costs to the agency, including penalties, are borne by the rate-paying public,” the group wrote to legislators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even though lawmakers in the Senate approved the change, WSPA continued to fight against the bill. It’s a debate that has taken place behind closed doors — not in public committees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, the bill has \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB1465\">sailed through all of its legislative votes\u003c/a> and was headed for a full vote in the state Senate when, last week, Wicks abruptly asked that the proposal be moved to the “inactive file,” essentially scuttling any debate or votes until next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those involved in conversations with Wicks and WSPA say that decision was driven by a push by the petroleum association to make the proposal effective only in rare cases — in WSPA’s words, only when “discharge results in a significant increase in hospitalizations, residential displacement, shelter in place, evacuation or destruction of property.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But air district officials say that definition is too narrow, because refineries often violate air regulations in less extreme incidents that are still dangerous to human health. They argue the standard the industry is arguing for won’t actually provide a deterrent or change how refineries do business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label='Related Stories' tag='refineries']For example, last November the PBF refinery in Martinez \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11952517/martinez-refinery-chemical-release-poses-no-long-term-hazard-tests-find\">released nearly 50,000 pounds of powdered, industrial chemicals, much of it landing on residential neighborhoods\u003c/a>. The accident led to investigations by the EPA, FBI, Contra Costa County regulators and the air district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the changes the oil industry wants to make, that release would not be covered by the proposed fine increases, local air regulators said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In our view, the purpose of the bill is to strengthen penalties for those types of events, not to protect them,” said air district spokeswoman Kristine Roselius, adding that the changes proposed by WSPA “would have provided an economic incentive to large facilities such as refineries, to downplay events as they were happening if they felt they could avoid higher penalties.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If this kind of successful pushback sounds similar, that’s because it has happened every time a refinery fine increase proposal has emerged in Sacramento over the last decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, just as another Wicks bill to do something similar was about to get a vote in the state Senate, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11923242/watered-down-state-bill-to-punish-refinery-pollution-gets-scrapped-after-oil-industry-pushback\">she killed it because it was watered down so much\u003c/a> that even the industry dropped its opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2018, Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa) proposed tripling some of the most serious penalties for refineries. Amid opposition from the oil industry — and, on the other side, pushback from environmentalists and the mayors of Richmond and Benicia, who said the proposal wasn’t strong enough — \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11660005/facing-widespread-opposition-lawmaker-ends-effort-to-increase-refinery-penalties\">that bill never even got a hearing\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2013, then state Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) introduced legislation to raise such penalties on the heels of a major fire at Richmond’s Chevron refinery, the worst refinery accident in the Bay Area in the last few decades. That bill died on the Assembly floor, also after opposition from oil companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even as the debate rages on in Sacramento, the problem for communities around these refineries persists. The day Wicks presented this year’s bill — at its final hearing before a Senate committee — the Contra Costa County refinery owned by PBF Energy released petroleum coke dust. Some residents described the dust as a “flaky ash.” The pollution came eight months after a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11952517/martinez-refinery-chemical-release-poses-no-long-term-hazard-tests-find\">much more severe chemical release from the same facility\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This morning in Martinez, which I drive through on my way here, there was a toxic dust release,” Wicks said at the July 11 hearing. “This is happening in our communities all the time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"title": "Oil Industry Blocks Effort to Increase Fines Against Polluting California Refineries … Again | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>California’s oil industry has once again quashed an attempt in the state Capitol to increase penalties on refineries that violate air quality laws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s the fourth time in a decade that the industry has successfully killed or delayed such an endeavor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The latest proposal was put on hold last week, just days before the Legislature finishes its work for the year on Sept. 14. Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), who authored the \u003ca href=\"https://legiscan.com/CA/bill/AB1465/2023\">bill\u003c/a>, said the move was prompted by concerns some lawmakers would vote against it because it wasn’t weakened enough to satisfy California’s main oil industry group, the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It became apparent that we were going to need more time to work on AB 1465 with our sponsor, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, and with opposition groups who engaged us on the possibility of additional amendments,” Wicks said in an email on Friday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>WSPA represents the oil companies that own all of the Bay Area’s petroleum refineries. The region’s Chevron, Valero, PBF, Marathon and Phillips 66 plants have for decades produced gasoline and jet fuels that have powered major components of the region’s transportation sector. But they have also received \u003ca href=\"https://www.baaqmd.gov/rules-and-compliance/compliance-assistance/notices-of-violations/novs-issued\">hundreds of notices of violations\u003c/a> from local air regulators in recent years, stemming from minor flaring incidents to severe accidents that forced nearby residents to stay indoors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those incidents prompted Wicks to propose tripling the maximum penalty amounts oil companies would pay when their refineries violate air quality regulations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>There are a variety of fine amounts refineries can face, but the general limit on those fines is currently $10,000. Environmentalists and some Bay Area elected leaders have described those penalties as part of the mere cost of doing business for companies like \u003ca href=\"https://chevroncorp.gcs-web.com/static-files/359d5f9b-5519-476e-976c-8ace50143c49\">Chevron, which earned $6 billion in the second quarter of this year\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wicks’ bill would increase the ceiling on fines to $30,000 per violation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But WSPA has opposed any attempts to crack down on air quality violations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And even before Wicks sidelined the bill last week, the industry group had already convinced legislators to significantly change the proposal several months ago by expanding its scope. Under the changes, the fines would also apply to dozens of industrial facilities that release chemicals into the air, including refineries, that are covered by Title V of the federal Clean Air Act. In the Bay Area there are \u003ca href=\"https://www.baaqmd.gov/permits/major-facility-review-title-v/title-v-permits\">dozens of such sites\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is no public policy rationale for singling out refineries,” wrote Shant Apekian, vice president of California policy and strategic affairs at WSPA, in a letter to Wicks in April.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While that complaint arose this spring, lawmakers did not amend the bill until June — and not everyone was happy with the change. Several industry and public agency associations, including the California Association of Sanitation Agencies, urged legislators to vote “no” on the bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unlike refineries, which are privately held for-profit corporations, public wastewater agencies provide an essential public service and all costs to the agency, including penalties, are borne by the rate-paying public,” the group wrote to legislators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even though lawmakers in the Senate approved the change, WSPA continued to fight against the bill. It’s a debate that has taken place behind closed doors — not in public committees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, the bill has \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB1465\">sailed through all of its legislative votes\u003c/a> and was headed for a full vote in the state Senate when, last week, Wicks abruptly asked that the proposal be moved to the “inactive file,” essentially scuttling any debate or votes until next year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those involved in conversations with Wicks and WSPA say that decision was driven by a push by the petroleum association to make the proposal effective only in rare cases — in WSPA’s words, only when “discharge results in a significant increase in hospitalizations, residential displacement, shelter in place, evacuation or destruction of property.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But air district officials say that definition is too narrow, because refineries often violate air regulations in less extreme incidents that are still dangerous to human health. They argue the standard the industry is arguing for won’t actually provide a deterrent or change how refineries do business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>For example, last November the PBF refinery in Martinez \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11952517/martinez-refinery-chemical-release-poses-no-long-term-hazard-tests-find\">released nearly 50,000 pounds of powdered, industrial chemicals, much of it landing on residential neighborhoods\u003c/a>. The accident led to investigations by the EPA, FBI, Contra Costa County regulators and the air district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the changes the oil industry wants to make, that release would not be covered by the proposed fine increases, local air regulators said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In our view, the purpose of the bill is to strengthen penalties for those types of events, not to protect them,” said air district spokeswoman Kristine Roselius, adding that the changes proposed by WSPA “would have provided an economic incentive to large facilities such as refineries, to downplay events as they were happening if they felt they could avoid higher penalties.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If this kind of successful pushback sounds similar, that’s because it has happened every time a refinery fine increase proposal has emerged in Sacramento over the last decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, just as another Wicks bill to do something similar was about to get a vote in the state Senate, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11923242/watered-down-state-bill-to-punish-refinery-pollution-gets-scrapped-after-oil-industry-pushback\">she killed it because it was watered down so much\u003c/a> that even the industry dropped its opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2018, Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa) proposed tripling some of the most serious penalties for refineries. Amid opposition from the oil industry — and, on the other side, pushback from environmentalists and the mayors of Richmond and Benicia, who said the proposal wasn’t strong enough — \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11660005/facing-widespread-opposition-lawmaker-ends-effort-to-increase-refinery-penalties\">that bill never even got a hearing\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2013, then state Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) introduced legislation to raise such penalties on the heels of a major fire at Richmond’s Chevron refinery, the worst refinery accident in the Bay Area in the last few decades. That bill died on the Assembly floor, also after opposition from oil companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even as the debate rages on in Sacramento, the problem for communities around these refineries persists. The day Wicks presented this year’s bill — at its final hearing before a Senate committee — the Contra Costa County refinery owned by PBF Energy released petroleum coke dust. Some residents described the dust as a “flaky ash.” The pollution came eight months after a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11952517/martinez-refinery-chemical-release-poses-no-long-term-hazard-tests-find\">much more severe chemical release from the same facility\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This morning in Martinez, which I drive through on my way here, there was a toxic dust release,” Wicks said at the July 11 hearing. “This is happening in our communities all the time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "4 Things to Know About California's Wildfire Smoke and Climate Change",
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"headTitle": "4 Things to Know About California’s Wildfire Smoke and Climate Change | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Wildfires and climate change are locked in a vicious circle: Fires worsen climate change — and climate change worsens fires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.wri.org/insights/6-graphics-explain-climate-feedback-loop-fueling-us-fires\">those at the World Resources Institute\u003c/a>, have been increasingly sounding the alarm about this feedback loop, warning that fires don’t burn in isolation — they produce greenhouse gases that, in turn, create warmer and drier conditions that ignite more frequent and intense fires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, wildfire smoke prompted another round of unhealthy air quality in California. Fires in Oregon and Northern California sent smoke into Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s a global nightmare: This summer, world temperatures hit an \u003ca href=\"https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/july-2023-confirmed-hottest-month-record#:~:text=The%20global%20average%20temperature%20for,previous%20warmest%20month%2C%20July%202019.\">all-time high\u003c/a>, the worst U.S. wildfire in \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/maui-deadliest-fires-us-history-507273968474a03bec332f42d10a018b\">more than a century\u003c/a> devastated Maui, a deadly \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/greece-wildfire-declared-largest-ever-recorded-in-eu\">fire in Greece\u003c/a> was declared Europe’s largest ever, and swaths of the Midwest and Northeast have been blanketed \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/us/air-quality-wildfires-smoke-forecast.html\">by smoke\u003c/a> from Canada’s forest fires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As California’s most intense wildfire months approach, the volume of greenhouse gases they emit is expected to grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB397\">bill\u003c/a> by Assemblymember \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/bill-essayli-1985/\">Bill Essayli\u003c/a>, a Republican from Riverside, introduced this year would have required the state to count wildfire emissions in its efforts to reduce statewide greenhouse gases. But the bill didn’t get far: It was defeated in committee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are answers to some of the key questions raised by the symbiotic relationship between wildfires and climate change:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What’s happening to carbon emissions as wildfires worsen?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Scientists around the world are trying to quantify just how much wildfires contribute to climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, California wildfires sent an estimated 9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/classic/cc/inventory/Wildfire%20Emission%20Estimates%20for%202022%20%28ADA%29.pdf\">California Air Resources Board estimates (PDF)\u003c/a>. That’s equivalent to the emissions of about 1.9 million cars in a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2020, California’s wildfires were its second-largest source of greenhouse gases, after transportation, according to a study published \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749122011022#!\">last year\u003c/a>. The researchers from UCLA and the University of Chicago concluded that the 2020 wildfires increased overall emissions by about 30%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When forests burn, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are released into the air. It’s considered part of a natural cycle, with plants absorbing and then releasing the chemicals into the air over time. But experts say the increasing frequency of fires might be \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/frequently-asked-questions-wildfire-emissions\">throwing this cycle out of balance\u003c/a>.[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Char Miller, environmental professor, Pomona College\"]‘Where does that carbon go? It goes up into the atmosphere, it circles all around the globe, it’s affecting all of us.’[/pullquote]Emissions this year from Canada’s forests have shattered records, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. Last year, carbon dioxide from boreal forests — the world’s northernmost forests, which span vast swaths of Canada and Alaska — hit a record high, UC Irvine researchers reported in the journal \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade0805\">Science\u003c/a>\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fires in these northern latitudes are of deep concern to researchers, as those forests historically were too cold to experience significant burns. They are incredibly dense and emit methane from the permafrost that lies beneath them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are forests that haven’t burned, not just in decades but probably centuries,” said Char Miller, an environmental professor at Pomona College in Claremont. “Where does that carbon go? It goes up into the atmosphere, it circles all around the globe, it’s affecting all of us. It’s both symbolic and I think really significant. The coldest part of the planet is also exploding in fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition, wildfires emit methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://eos.org/articles/as-wildfires-grow-so-could-methane-emissions\">study published earlier this summer\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Will wildfire smoke derail the state’s climate goals?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Researchers are increasingly calling attention to how forest fires might be eroding \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749122011022#bbib30\">the state’s climate goals\u003c/a>, with UCLA scientists describing the state’s efforts as “up in smoke.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Jerrett, a professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said nearly two decades worth of emission reductions from power plants were threatened by the 2020 fires, which included some of California’s \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/california-wildfire-map-tracker/\">largest and most destructive fires\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Essentially, the positive impact of all that hard work over almost two decades is at risk of being swept aside by the smoke produced in a single year of record-breaking wildfires,” Jerrett said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://aqrc.ucdavis.edu/news/how-much-problem-co2-emitted-ca-wildfires\">Some experts\u003c/a> say carbon emissions from wildfires are not much of a concern — that the carbon captured by trees, brush and grasses already exists in the atmosphere so its release during fires is part of a natural cycle. As a result, they say, those emissions shouldn’t be considered net contributors to climate change.[aside postID=news_11959515 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/08/230829-POWER-LINES-Getty-JS-KQED-1020x669.jpg']“These are distractions from the real issue which is that we need to generate a lot more renewable energy to displace our use of fossil fuels,” Anthony Wexler, director of the Air Quality Research Center at UC Davis, wrote to CalMatters in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the other hand, some experts say carbon is carbon — and that it all contributes to climate change. Jerrett and the other authors of the UCLA report \u003ca href=\"https://news.uchicago.edu/story/wildfires-are-erasing-californias-climate-gains-research-shows\">said\u003c/a> wildfire emissions should be a bigger part of California’s climate policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For its part, the California Air Resources Board estimates emissions from wildfires, but it doesn’t count them against greenhouse gas targets for 2030. The targets are based only on gases produced by industries, energy, transportation \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/ghg-inventory-program\">and other human sources\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom \u003ca href=\"https://a66.asmdc.org/press-releases/20220916-governor-newsom-signs-assemblymember-muratsuchis-ab-1279-california-climate\">signed into law\u003c/a> a requirement that the state achieve net-zero emissions as quickly as possible, no later than 2045. That mandate means the state will have to ultimately consider the roles of natural and working lands, said David Clegern, an air board spokesman. However, some wildfires are “part of the natural cycle and should not count against targets,” Clegern wrote in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clegern said “It’s difficult to know” how much carbon from wildfires “might reduce the effectiveness of the state’s climate programs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s because, to a certain extent, wildfire smoke is part of a natural carbon cycle. … We cannot yet draw a bright line to accurately measure that impact,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, he said scaling back fossil fuels has to be California’s priority.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California is working on reducing wildfire in an all-hands-on-deck manner, but we won’t really fix the problem until we quit pumping more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere,” Clegern said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How does the state plan to deal with carbon from fires?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>State officials say restoring the health of forests and taking steps to make sure they are more resilient to fires will result in fewer wildfires and fewer climate-changing emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Air board models project that natural and working lands — forests, rangelands, urban green spaces, wetlands and farms — will be a net source of emissions through 2045, while at the same time these lands will experience a decrease in the trees, shrubbery, soil and other natural features that naturally sequester carbon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why the proper management of these undeveloped lands will be important in the coming two decades. More than half of California’s forestland is managed by the federal government, and the Newsom administration \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/08/04/governor-newsom-u-s-agriculture-secretary-vilsack-and-forest-service-chief-moore-discuss-state-federal-efforts-to-build-wildfire-resilience/#:~:text=Last%20year%2C%20the%20Newsom%20Administration,the%20risk%20of%20catastrophic%20wildfire.\">announced\u003c/a> in 2021 that it was working with the Biden administration to better manage forests and build fire resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11960144\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11960144\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02.jpg\" alt=\"The San Francisco skyline is illuminated in a burnt, orange smog during wildfire season.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The San Francisco skyline in the distance behind Crissy Field is barely visible due to smoke from wildfires burning across California on Sept. 9, 2020. Researchers say smoke from wildfires accounted for up to half of all small-particle air pollution in parts of the western U.S. in recent years. \u003ccite>(Eric Risberg/AP Photo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“These lands can be part of the climate solution, but we need to increase our efforts to reduce their emissions and improve their ability to store carbon into the future,” Clegern said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burning forests might be complicating the state’s climate goals in other ways, too. California’s carbon offset market has been threatened by out-of-state wildfires, the online publication Grist reported, because the state awards \u003ca href=\"https://grist.org/wildfires/california-forests-carbon-offsets-reduce-emissions/\">credits\u003c/a> to companies that maintain forests elsewhere to store carbon.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What about the impact of smog and soot?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Wildfire smoke is \u003ca href=\"https://www.airnow.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/wildfire-smoke-guide-revised-2019-chapters-1-3.pdf\">toxic (PDF),\u003c/a> containing substances such as carbon monoxide and benzene, a carcinogen. Smoke’s tiny particles of soot are considered its most hazardous ingredient since they can enter airways, lodge in the lungs and trigger asthma or heart attacks. Local air quality districts regularly send out warnings in California when wildfires spread smoke, sometimes hundreds of miles from the fires.[aside label='More on Wildfires' tag='wildfire']Smoke may be negating some of California’s hard-fought \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/22/climate/wildfire-smoke-pollution.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share\">clean-air gains\u003c/a>. A \u003ca href=\"https://epic.uchicago.edu/insights/wildfire-ravaged-california-is-home-to-29-of-the-top-30-most-polluted-counties/\">report\u003c/a> last year by the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago found that some California counties were more polluted than they were in 1970. In 2020, more than half of California counties experienced their worst air pollution since 1998, according to the report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s air quality agencies do not have to consider wildfire smoke when they outline plans to attain health standards for air pollutants, such as fine particles and ozone. That’s because fires are considered “exceptional events” under the federal Clean Air Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Even though the frequency of wildfires is increasing, we have no reason to believe that (U.S.) EPA will change how wildfire emissions are treated under the exceptional events process,” Clegern said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, concern about the impact of smoke on communities is growing. Nitrogen oxides, which form smog, appear to be increasing in rural areas — largely due to wildfires, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acec5f\">recent UC Davis study\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you go to these remote forests — which are predominantly in the north and the Sierras in the south — what you find is that there’s this large increase,” said study co-author \u003ca href=\"https://lawr.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/faloona-ian\">Ian Faloona\u003c/a>, a UC Davis bio-micro-meteorologist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Every year, California wildfires emit as much carbon as almost 2 million cars, posing a threat to efforts to battle climate change.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Wildfires and climate change are locked in a vicious circle: Fires worsen climate change — and climate change worsens fires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.wri.org/insights/6-graphics-explain-climate-feedback-loop-fueling-us-fires\">those at the World Resources Institute\u003c/a>, have been increasingly sounding the alarm about this feedback loop, warning that fires don’t burn in isolation — they produce greenhouse gases that, in turn, create warmer and drier conditions that ignite more frequent and intense fires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, wildfire smoke prompted another round of unhealthy air quality in California. Fires in Oregon and Northern California sent smoke into Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it’s a global nightmare: This summer, world temperatures hit an \u003ca href=\"https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/july-2023-confirmed-hottest-month-record#:~:text=The%20global%20average%20temperature%20for,previous%20warmest%20month%2C%20July%202019.\">all-time high\u003c/a>, the worst U.S. wildfire in \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/maui-deadliest-fires-us-history-507273968474a03bec332f42d10a018b\">more than a century\u003c/a> devastated Maui, a deadly \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/greece-wildfire-declared-largest-ever-recorded-in-eu\">fire in Greece\u003c/a> was declared Europe’s largest ever, and swaths of the Midwest and Northeast have been blanketed \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/us/air-quality-wildfires-smoke-forecast.html\">by smoke\u003c/a> from Canada’s forest fires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As California’s most intense wildfire months approach, the volume of greenhouse gases they emit is expected to grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB397\">bill\u003c/a> by Assemblymember \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/bill-essayli-1985/\">Bill Essayli\u003c/a>, a Republican from Riverside, introduced this year would have required the state to count wildfire emissions in its efforts to reduce statewide greenhouse gases. But the bill didn’t get far: It was defeated in committee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are answers to some of the key questions raised by the symbiotic relationship between wildfires and climate change:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What’s happening to carbon emissions as wildfires worsen?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Scientists around the world are trying to quantify just how much wildfires contribute to climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, California wildfires sent an estimated 9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/classic/cc/inventory/Wildfire%20Emission%20Estimates%20for%202022%20%28ADA%29.pdf\">California Air Resources Board estimates (PDF)\u003c/a>. That’s equivalent to the emissions of about 1.9 million cars in a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2020, California’s wildfires were its second-largest source of greenhouse gases, after transportation, according to a study published \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749122011022#!\">last year\u003c/a>. The researchers from UCLA and the University of Chicago concluded that the 2020 wildfires increased overall emissions by about 30%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When forests burn, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are released into the air. It’s considered part of a natural cycle, with plants absorbing and then releasing the chemicals into the air over time. But experts say the increasing frequency of fires might be \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/frequently-asked-questions-wildfire-emissions\">throwing this cycle out of balance\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘Where does that carbon go? It goes up into the atmosphere, it circles all around the globe, it’s affecting all of us.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Emissions this year from Canada’s forests have shattered records, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. Last year, carbon dioxide from boreal forests — the world’s northernmost forests, which span vast swaths of Canada and Alaska — hit a record high, UC Irvine researchers reported in the journal \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade0805\">Science\u003c/a>\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fires in these northern latitudes are of deep concern to researchers, as those forests historically were too cold to experience significant burns. They are incredibly dense and emit methane from the permafrost that lies beneath them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are forests that haven’t burned, not just in decades but probably centuries,” said Char Miller, an environmental professor at Pomona College in Claremont. “Where does that carbon go? It goes up into the atmosphere, it circles all around the globe, it’s affecting all of us. It’s both symbolic and I think really significant. The coldest part of the planet is also exploding in fire.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition, wildfires emit methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://eos.org/articles/as-wildfires-grow-so-could-methane-emissions\">study published earlier this summer\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Will wildfire smoke derail the state’s climate goals?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Researchers are increasingly calling attention to how forest fires might be eroding \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749122011022#bbib30\">the state’s climate goals\u003c/a>, with UCLA scientists describing the state’s efforts as “up in smoke.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Michael Jerrett, a professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said nearly two decades worth of emission reductions from power plants were threatened by the 2020 fires, which included some of California’s \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/california-wildfire-map-tracker/\">largest and most destructive fires\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Essentially, the positive impact of all that hard work over almost two decades is at risk of being swept aside by the smoke produced in a single year of record-breaking wildfires,” Jerrett said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://aqrc.ucdavis.edu/news/how-much-problem-co2-emitted-ca-wildfires\">Some experts\u003c/a> say carbon emissions from wildfires are not much of a concern — that the carbon captured by trees, brush and grasses already exists in the atmosphere so its release during fires is part of a natural cycle. As a result, they say, those emissions shouldn’t be considered net contributors to climate change.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“These are distractions from the real issue which is that we need to generate a lot more renewable energy to displace our use of fossil fuels,” Anthony Wexler, director of the Air Quality Research Center at UC Davis, wrote to CalMatters in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the other hand, some experts say carbon is carbon — and that it all contributes to climate change. Jerrett and the other authors of the UCLA report \u003ca href=\"https://news.uchicago.edu/story/wildfires-are-erasing-californias-climate-gains-research-shows\">said\u003c/a> wildfire emissions should be a bigger part of California’s climate policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For its part, the California Air Resources Board estimates emissions from wildfires, but it doesn’t count them against greenhouse gas targets for 2030. The targets are based only on gases produced by industries, energy, transportation \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/ghg-inventory-program\">and other human sources\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom \u003ca href=\"https://a66.asmdc.org/press-releases/20220916-governor-newsom-signs-assemblymember-muratsuchis-ab-1279-california-climate\">signed into law\u003c/a> a requirement that the state achieve net-zero emissions as quickly as possible, no later than 2045. That mandate means the state will have to ultimately consider the roles of natural and working lands, said David Clegern, an air board spokesman. However, some wildfires are “part of the natural cycle and should not count against targets,” Clegern wrote in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clegern said “It’s difficult to know” how much carbon from wildfires “might reduce the effectiveness of the state’s climate programs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s because, to a certain extent, wildfire smoke is part of a natural carbon cycle. … We cannot yet draw a bright line to accurately measure that impact,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, he said scaling back fossil fuels has to be California’s priority.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California is working on reducing wildfire in an all-hands-on-deck manner, but we won’t really fix the problem until we quit pumping more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere,” Clegern said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How does the state plan to deal with carbon from fires?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>State officials say restoring the health of forests and taking steps to make sure they are more resilient to fires will result in fewer wildfires and fewer climate-changing emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Air board models project that natural and working lands — forests, rangelands, urban green spaces, wetlands and farms — will be a net source of emissions through 2045, while at the same time these lands will experience a decrease in the trees, shrubbery, soil and other natural features that naturally sequester carbon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why the proper management of these undeveloped lands will be important in the coming two decades. More than half of California’s forestland is managed by the federal government, and the Newsom administration \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/08/04/governor-newsom-u-s-agriculture-secretary-vilsack-and-forest-service-chief-moore-discuss-state-federal-efforts-to-build-wildfire-resilience/#:~:text=Last%20year%2C%20the%20Newsom%20Administration,the%20risk%20of%20catastrophic%20wildfire.\">announced\u003c/a> in 2021 that it was working with the Biden administration to better manage forests and build fire resilience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11960144\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11960144\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02.jpg\" alt=\"The San Francisco skyline is illuminated in a burnt, orange smog during wildfire season.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/CMWildfire02-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The San Francisco skyline in the distance behind Crissy Field is barely visible due to smoke from wildfires burning across California on Sept. 9, 2020. Researchers say smoke from wildfires accounted for up to half of all small-particle air pollution in parts of the western U.S. in recent years. \u003ccite>(Eric Risberg/AP Photo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“These lands can be part of the climate solution, but we need to increase our efforts to reduce their emissions and improve their ability to store carbon into the future,” Clegern said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burning forests might be complicating the state’s climate goals in other ways, too. California’s carbon offset market has been threatened by out-of-state wildfires, the online publication Grist reported, because the state awards \u003ca href=\"https://grist.org/wildfires/california-forests-carbon-offsets-reduce-emissions/\">credits\u003c/a> to companies that maintain forests elsewhere to store carbon.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What about the impact of smog and soot?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Wildfire smoke is \u003ca href=\"https://www.airnow.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/wildfire-smoke-guide-revised-2019-chapters-1-3.pdf\">toxic (PDF),\u003c/a> containing substances such as carbon monoxide and benzene, a carcinogen. Smoke’s tiny particles of soot are considered its most hazardous ingredient since they can enter airways, lodge in the lungs and trigger asthma or heart attacks. Local air quality districts regularly send out warnings in California when wildfires spread smoke, sometimes hundreds of miles from the fires.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Smoke may be negating some of California’s hard-fought \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/22/climate/wildfire-smoke-pollution.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share\">clean-air gains\u003c/a>. A \u003ca href=\"https://epic.uchicago.edu/insights/wildfire-ravaged-california-is-home-to-29-of-the-top-30-most-polluted-counties/\">report\u003c/a> last year by the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago found that some California counties were more polluted than they were in 1970. In 2020, more than half of California counties experienced their worst air pollution since 1998, according to the report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California’s air quality agencies do not have to consider wildfire smoke when they outline plans to attain health standards for air pollutants, such as fine particles and ozone. That’s because fires are considered “exceptional events” under the federal Clean Air Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Even though the frequency of wildfires is increasing, we have no reason to believe that (U.S.) EPA will change how wildfire emissions are treated under the exceptional events process,” Clegern said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, concern about the impact of smoke on communities is growing. Nitrogen oxides, which form smog, appear to be increasing in rural areas — largely due to wildfires, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acec5f\">recent UC Davis study\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you go to these remote forests — which are predominantly in the north and the Sierras in the south — what you find is that there’s this large increase,” said study co-author \u003ca href=\"https://lawr.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/faloona-ian\">Ian Faloona\u003c/a>, a UC Davis bio-micro-meteorologist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"tagline": "The flip side of gentrification, told through one town",
"info": "Gentrification is changing cities across America, forcing people from neighborhoods they have long called home. Call them the displaced. Now those priced out of the Bay Area are looking for a better life in an unlikely place. American Suburb follows this migration to one California town along the Delta, 45 miles from San Francisco. But is this once sleepy suburb ready for them?",
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},
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"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
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},
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"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
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"order": 8
},
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},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"order": 1
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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}
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"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
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"source": "NPR"
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"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"jerrybrown": {
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"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"order": 18
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
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},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
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"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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