window.__IS_SSR__=true
window.__INITIAL_STATE__={
"attachmentsReducer": {
"audio_0": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "audio_0",
"imgSizes": {
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/themes/KQED-unified/img/audio_bgs/background0.jpg"
}
}
},
"audio_1": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "audio_1",
"imgSizes": {
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/themes/KQED-unified/img/audio_bgs/background1.jpg"
}
}
},
"audio_2": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "audio_2",
"imgSizes": {
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/themes/KQED-unified/img/audio_bgs/background2.jpg"
}
}
},
"audio_3": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "audio_3",
"imgSizes": {
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/themes/KQED-unified/img/audio_bgs/background3.jpg"
}
}
},
"audio_4": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "audio_4",
"imgSizes": {
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/themes/KQED-unified/img/audio_bgs/background4.jpg"
}
}
},
"placeholder": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "placeholder",
"imgSizes": {
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-160x107.jpg",
"width": 160,
"height": 107,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-800x533.jpg",
"width": 800,
"height": 533,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-768x512.jpg",
"width": 768,
"height": 512,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"large": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1020x680.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"height": 680,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1536x1024.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"height": 1024,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"fd-lrg": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1536x1024.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"height": 1024,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"fd-med": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1020x680.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"height": 680,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"fd-sm": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-800x533.jpg",
"width": 800,
"height": 533,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"height": 372,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"height": 576,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"xxsmall": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-160x107.jpg",
"width": 160,
"height": 107,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"xsmall": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"height": 372,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"small": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"height": 372,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"xlarge": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1020x680.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"height": 680,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"full-width": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1920x1280.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1280,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"guest-author-32": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-1333x1333-1-160x160.jpg",
"width": 32,
"height": 32,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"guest-author-50": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-1333x1333-1-160x160.jpg",
"width": 50,
"height": 50,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"guest-author-64": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-1333x1333-1-160x160.jpg",
"width": 64,
"height": 64,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"guest-author-96": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-1333x1333-1-160x160.jpg",
"width": 96,
"height": 96,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"guest-author-128": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-1333x1333-1-160x160.jpg",
"width": 128,
"height": 128,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"detail": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-1333x1333-1-160x160.jpg",
"width": 160,
"height": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1.jpg",
"width": 2000,
"height": 1333
}
}
},
"science_1982777": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "science_1982777",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982777",
"found": true
},
"parent": 1982776,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9508_slide-fae9363c697df9878756c47ad20602584193d035-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9508_slide-fae9363c697df9878756c47ad20602584193d035-160x107.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 107
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9508_slide-fae9363c697df9878756c47ad20602584193d035-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9508_slide-fae9363c697df9878756c47ad20602584193d035-scaled.jpg",
"width": 2560,
"height": 1707
},
"2048x2048": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9508_slide-fae9363c697df9878756c47ad20602584193d035-2048x1366.jpg",
"width": 2048,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1366
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9508_slide-fae9363c697df9878756c47ad20602584193d035-1020x680.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 680
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9508_slide-fae9363c697df9878756c47ad20602584193d035-1536x1024.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1024
},
"full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9508_slide-fae9363c697df9878756c47ad20602584193d035-1920x1280.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1280
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9508_slide-fae9363c697df9878756c47ad20602584193d035-800x533.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 533
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9508_slide-fae9363c697df9878756c47ad20602584193d035-768x512.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 512
}
},
"publishDate": 1684945791,
"modified": 1684958540,
"caption": "Pipes direct water into an irrigation project held by the University of California. After a few decades of not enough water California water officials are scrambling to catch as much of this year's floodwaters as they can.",
"description": "Pipes direct water into an irrigation project held by the University of California. After a few decades of not enough water, California water officials are scrambling to catch as much of this year's floodwaters as they can.",
"title": "Pipes direct water into an irrigation project held by the University of California. After a few decades of not enough water California water officials are scrambling to catch as much of this year's floodwaters as they can.",
"credit": "Claire Harbage/NPR",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "A big pipe is seen on a vineyard.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"science_1982755": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "science_1982755",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982755",
"found": true
},
"parent": 0,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/004_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/004_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-160x107.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 107
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/004_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/004_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1280
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/004_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-1020x680.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 680
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/004_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-1536x1024.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1024
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/004_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-800x533.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 533
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/004_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-768x512.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 512
}
},
"publishDate": 1684525158,
"modified": 1684526011,
"caption": "Blue, translucent Velella velella washed ashore on Ocean Beach in San Francisco on May 18, 2023.",
"description": null,
"title": "004_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023",
"credit": "Beth LaBerge/KQED",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "A closeup shot of the beach sand with a blue, translucent organism that kind of looks similar to a jellyfish resting ashore.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"science_1982675": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "science_1982675",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982675",
"found": true
},
"parent": 1982673,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-02-CM-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-02-CM-160x107.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 107
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-02-CM-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-02-CM.jpg",
"width": 1200,
"height": 800
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-02-CM-1020x680.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 680
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-02-CM-800x533.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 533
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-02-CM-768x512.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 512
}
},
"publishDate": 1683664337,
"modified": 1683755996,
"caption": "Gary Gragg examines buds on one of the mango plants he's growing in the Sacramento Valley.",
"description": null,
"title": "Mango plant",
"credit": "Rahul Lal/CalMatters",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "An image of a man examining buds on a mango plant.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"science_1982500": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "science_1982500",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982500",
"found": true
},
"parent": 1982494,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS50202_IMG_6476-2-qut-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS50202_IMG_6476-2-qut-160x107.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 107
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS50202_IMG_6476-2-qut-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS50202_IMG_6476-2-qut.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1280
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS50202_IMG_6476-2-qut-1020x680.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 680
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS50202_IMG_6476-2-qut-1536x1024.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1024
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS50202_IMG_6476-2-qut-800x533.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 533
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS50202_IMG_6476-2-qut-768x512.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 512
}
},
"publishDate": 1682712903,
"modified": 1682712951,
"caption": "Traffic on Interstate 880 toward Oakland flowing with cars and diesel trucks midafternoon on Monday, June 28, 2021.",
"description": null,
"title": "RS50202_IMG_6476 (2)-qut",
"credit": "Joyce Tsai/KQED",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "Cars and trucks on an interstate highway as seen from an overpass.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"science_1982310": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "science_1982310",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982310",
"found": true
},
"parent": 1982309,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS48681_EPA_image_selects_fullsize-5-qut-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS48681_EPA_image_selects_fullsize-5-qut-160x107.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 107
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS48681_EPA_image_selects_fullsize-5-qut-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS48681_EPA_image_selects_fullsize-5-qut.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1279
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS48681_EPA_image_selects_fullsize-5-qut-1020x679.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 679
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS48681_EPA_image_selects_fullsize-5-qut-1536x1023.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1023
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS48681_EPA_image_selects_fullsize-5-qut-800x533.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 533
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS48681_EPA_image_selects_fullsize-5-qut-768x512.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 512
}
},
"publishDate": 1681930992,
"modified": 1681942571,
"caption": "Wetlands of San Mateo County offer natural flood protection for neighborhoods of East Palo Alto.",
"description": null,
"title": "RS48681_EPA_image_selects_fullsize-5-qut",
"credit": "JJ Harris/Techboogie/KQED",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "Blue bay water in the background, green marshes and homes.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"science_1982131": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "science_1982131",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982131",
"found": true
},
"parent": 1982130,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_05-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_05-160x107.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 107
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_05-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_05.jpg",
"width": 1872,
"height": 1248
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_05-1020x680.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 680
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_05-1536x1024.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1024
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_05-800x533.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 533
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_05-768x512.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 512
}
},
"publishDate": 1680558446,
"modified": 1680664071,
"caption": "Developers have redesigned Treasure Island to withstand a rising San Francisco Bay, elevating land and setting aside space for ever-higher seawalls. Engineers say planned fortifications will hold — but with flood risk accelerating, no one knows for how long.",
"description": "Developers have redesigned Treasure Island to withstand a rising San Francisco Bay, elevating land and setting aside space for ever-higher sea walls. Engineers say planned fortifications will hold — but with flood risk accelerating, no one knows for how long. ",
"title": "Treasure Island",
"credit": "Yesica Prado/San Francisco Public Press",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "An aerial view of treasure Island.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"science_1982148": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "science_1982148",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982148",
"found": true
},
"parent": 1982147,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/CaliforniaSnow-2048x1412-1-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/CaliforniaSnow-2048x1412-1-160x110.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 110
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/CaliforniaSnow-2048x1412-1-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/CaliforniaSnow-2048x1412-1.jpg",
"width": 2048,
"height": 1412
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/CaliforniaSnow-2048x1412-1-1020x703.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 703
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/CaliforniaSnow-2048x1412-1-1536x1059.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1059
},
"full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/CaliforniaSnow-2048x1412-1-1920x1324.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1324
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/CaliforniaSnow-2048x1412-1-800x552.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 552
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/CaliforniaSnow-2048x1412-1-768x530.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 530
}
},
"publishDate": 1680633649,
"modified": 1680648581,
"caption": "In Mammoth Lakes, snow covers roofs next to snowbanks piled up from new and past storms in the Sierra Nevada, in the wake of an atmospheric river event, in March 2023.",
"description": "In Mammoth Lakes, California, snow covers roofs next to snowbanks in March piled up from new and past storms in the Sierra Nevada mountains, in the wake of an atmospheric river event. ",
"title": "California Hit By Another Winter Storm, Deepening The Already Historic Snowpack In Mountain Regions",
"credit": "Mario Tama/Getty Images",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "In an aerial view, snow covers roofs next to snowbanks piled up from new and past storms in the Sierra Nevada mountains.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"science_1982097": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "science_1982097",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982097",
"found": true
},
"parent": 1982079,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63921_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1309-qut-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63921_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1309-qut-160x106.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 106
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63921_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1309-qut-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63921_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1309-qut.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1277
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63921_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1309-qut-1020x678.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 678
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63921_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1309-qut-1536x1022.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1022
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63921_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1309-qut-800x532.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 532
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63921_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1309-qut-768x511.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 511
}
},
"publishDate": 1680199410,
"modified": 1680212364,
"caption": "Climate activist and Pajaro Valley High School senior Denia Escutia,18, stands in the family's mud-coated kitchen in Pajaro on March 24, 2023, just days after residents began returning to their homes. Several weeks ago, Pajaro residents were forced to evacuate before dawn after an upstream levee breached, spurring widespread flooding.",
"description": null,
"title": "RS63921_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning 1309-qut",
"credit": "Kori Suzuki/KQED",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "A young person wearing rubber boots stands in a small galley kitchen, where appliances on piled on the counter, looking at a mud-caked floor.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"science_1982075": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "science_1982075",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982075",
"found": true
},
"parent": 1982049,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/image5-2-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/image5-2-160x110.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 110
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/image5-2-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/image5-2.jpg",
"width": 1896,
"height": 1304
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/image5-2-1020x702.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 702
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/image5-2-1536x1056.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1056
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/image5-2-800x550.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 550
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/image5-2-768x528.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 528
}
},
"publishDate": 1680144603,
"modified": 1680197759,
"caption": "Shaun Kinetic, co-founder of Charm Industrial, displays the pyrolyzer that his San Francisco-based company uses to remove carbon from agricultural waste products, on Jan. 26, 2023.",
"description": null,
"title": "image5",
"credit": "Laura Klivans/KQED",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "A young white man stands in front of a large machine on top of a truck.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"science_1981944": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "science_1981944",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1981944",
"found": true
},
"parent": 1981943,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_10_kj_0135_oroville_spillway_release_drone_custom-1c4d8c2890281e48323fb324cfa8dc4fdda4bca7-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_10_kj_0135_oroville_spillway_release_drone_custom-1c4d8c2890281e48323fb324cfa8dc4fdda4bca7-160x111.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 111
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_10_kj_0135_oroville_spillway_release_drone_custom-1c4d8c2890281e48323fb324cfa8dc4fdda4bca7-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_10_kj_0135_oroville_spillway_release_drone_custom-1c4d8c2890281e48323fb324cfa8dc4fdda4bca7.jpg",
"width": 2500,
"height": 1730
},
"2048x2048": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_10_kj_0135_oroville_spillway_release_drone_custom-1c4d8c2890281e48323fb324cfa8dc4fdda4bca7-2048x1417.jpg",
"width": 2048,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1417
},
"large": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_10_kj_0135_oroville_spillway_release_drone_custom-1c4d8c2890281e48323fb324cfa8dc4fdda4bca7-1020x706.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 706
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_10_kj_0135_oroville_spillway_release_drone_custom-1c4d8c2890281e48323fb324cfa8dc4fdda4bca7-1536x1063.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1063
},
"full-width": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_10_kj_0135_oroville_spillway_release_drone_custom-1c4d8c2890281e48323fb324cfa8dc4fdda4bca7-1920x1329.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1329
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_10_kj_0135_oroville_spillway_release_drone_custom-1c4d8c2890281e48323fb324cfa8dc4fdda4bca7-800x554.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 554
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_10_kj_0135_oroville_spillway_release_drone_custom-1c4d8c2890281e48323fb324cfa8dc4fdda4bca7-768x531.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 531
}
},
"publishDate": 1679589957,
"modified": 1715188781,
"caption": "Water pours out of Lake Oroville in Northern California in March 2023. Reservoir levels plummeted over the last three years but now have more water than they can hold.",
"description": "A drone provides an aerial view of the small cloud mist formed as water flows over the four energy dissipator blocks at the end of the Lake Oroville main spillway. The California Department of Water Resources increased the water release down the main spillway from 4,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 8,000 cfs. Main spillway releases will continue to manage lake levels in anticipation of rain and snowmelt. Photo taken March 10, 2023.\n\nKen James / California Department of Water Resources",
"title": "Water pours out of Lake Oroville in Northern California in March. Reservoirs levels plummeted over the last three years, but now have more water than they can hold.",
"credit": "Ken James/California Department of Water Resources",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "Water flowing at high speeds out of a lake.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"science_1981793": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "science_1981793",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1981793",
"found": true
},
"parent": 1981790,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-Drone-Yuma-AZ-MG-CM-01-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-Drone-Yuma-AZ-MG-CM-01-160x107.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 107
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-Drone-Yuma-AZ-MG-CM-01-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-Drone-Yuma-AZ-MG-CM-01.jpg",
"width": 1200,
"height": 800
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-Drone-Yuma-AZ-MG-CM-01-1020x680.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 680
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-Drone-Yuma-AZ-MG-CM-01-800x533.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 533
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-Drone-Yuma-AZ-MG-CM-01-768x512.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 512
}
},
"publishDate": 1677699355,
"modified": 1677719141,
"caption": "The South Yuma County Landfill in Yuma, Arizona, on Nov. 29, 2022.",
"description": null,
"title": "An aerial view of a gray landfill amid beige, sandy soil.",
"credit": "Miguel Gutierrez Jr./CalMatters",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "An aerial view of a landfill in Arizona.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"science_1981715": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "science_1981715",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1981715",
"found": true
},
"parent": 1981710,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/02/GettyImages-1338023794-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/02/GettyImages-1338023794-160x106.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 106
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/02/GettyImages-1338023794-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/02/GettyImages-1338023794.jpg",
"width": 2124,
"height": 1411
},
"2048x2048": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/02/GettyImages-1338023794-2048x1361.jpg",
"width": 2048,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1361
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/02/GettyImages-1338023794-1020x678.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 678
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/02/GettyImages-1338023794-1536x1020.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1020
},
"full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/02/GettyImages-1338023794-1920x1275.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1275
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/02/GettyImages-1338023794-800x531.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 531
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/02/GettyImages-1338023794-768x510.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 510
}
},
"publishDate": 1677190519,
"modified": 1677262070,
"caption": "A northern spotted owl is seen perched on a tree branch in Willamette National Forest, in Oregon's Cascade Range.",
"description": null,
"title": "Northern Spotted Owl in old-growth forest; Willamette National Forest, Cascade Mountains, Oregon, USA.",
"credit": "Greg Vaughn/Getty Images",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "A northern spotted owl is perched on a tree branch in an old-growth forest.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
}
},
"audioPlayerReducer": {
"postId": "stream_live",
"isPaused": true,
"isPlaying": false,
"pfsActive": false,
"pledgeModalIsOpen": true,
"playerDrawerIsOpen": false,
"liveAudioPlayStartedAt": 0,
"liveAudioPlayContext": ""
},
"authorsReducer": {
"byline_science_1982776": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "byline_science_1982776",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"slug": "byline_science_1982776",
"name": "\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348779465/nathan-rott\">Nathan Rott\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/643722609/claire-harbage\">Claire Harbage\u003c/a>",
"isLoading": false
},
"byline_science_1982673": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "byline_science_1982673",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"slug": "byline_science_1982673",
"name": "\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/author/alastair-bland/\">Alastair Bland\u003c/a>",
"isLoading": false
},
"byline_science_1982130": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "byline_science_1982130",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"slug": "byline_science_1982130",
"name": "Kristi Coale\u003cbr>San Francisco Public Press",
"isLoading": false
},
"byline_science_1982147": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "byline_science_1982147",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"slug": "byline_science_1982147",
"name": "\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/profile/emma-foehringer-merchant/\">Emma Foehringer Merchant\u003c/a>",
"isLoading": false
},
"byline_science_1981943": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "byline_science_1981943",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"slug": "byline_science_1981943",
"name": "\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/803934365/lauren-sommer\">Lauren Sommer\u003c/a>",
"isLoading": false
},
"byline_science_1981790": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "byline_science_1981790",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"slug": "byline_science_1981790",
"name": "\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/author/robert-lewis/\">Robert Lewis\u003c/a>",
"isLoading": false
},
"byline_science_1981710": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "byline_science_1981710",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"slug": "byline_science_1981710",
"name": "Olga R. Rodriguez\u003cbr>Associated Press",
"isLoading": false
},
"lklivans": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "8648",
"meta": {
"index": "authors_1716337520",
"id": "8648",
"found": true
},
"name": "Laura Klivans",
"firstName": "Laura",
"lastName": "Klivans",
"slug": "lklivans",
"email": "lklivans@kqed.org",
"display_author_email": true,
"staff_mastheads": [
"news",
"science"
],
"title": "Reporter",
"bio": "Laura Klivans is an award-winning science reporter for KQED News, where she covers climate change with an eye on both groundbreaking progress and gaps in action. She is the former host of KQED's blockbuster video series about tiny, amazing animals, \u003cem>Deep Look\u003c/em>. Her work reaches national audiences through NPR, \u003cem>Here & Now, \u003c/em>PRI, and other major outlets. \r\n\r\nLaura’s won five Northern California Area Emmy Awards for Deep Look and First Place in the Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards for a podcast exploring how one Oakland neighborhood teamed up to reduce planet-heating pollution.\r\n\r\nBeyond her reporting, she hosts and moderates events. In the past, she taught audio storytelling at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, led international education programs, worked with immigrants and refugees along the Thai-Burmese border, taught high schoolers sex ed, and was an actress. \r\n\r\nShe's a former UC Berkeley Human Rights Fellow, USC Center for Health Journalism's California Fellow and Coro Fellow in Public Affairs. Laura has a master’s in journalism from UC Berkeley, a master’s in education from Harvard, and an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University.\r\n\r\nShe loves trying to riddle the meaning out of vanity license plates.",
"avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/af8e757bb8ce7b7fee6160ba66e37327?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twitter": "lauraklivans",
"facebook": null,
"instagram": null,
"linkedin": null,
"sites": [
{
"site": "news",
"roles": [
"editor"
]
},
{
"site": "stateofhealth",
"roles": [
"contributor",
"editor"
]
},
{
"site": "science",
"roles": [
"editor"
]
},
{
"site": "forum",
"roles": [
"editor"
]
}
],
"headData": {
"title": "Laura Klivans | KQED",
"description": "Reporter",
"ogImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/af8e757bb8ce7b7fee6160ba66e37327?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/af8e757bb8ce7b7fee6160ba66e37327?s=600&d=blank&r=g"
},
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/author/lklivans"
},
"kevinstark": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "11608",
"meta": {
"index": "authors_1716337520",
"id": "11608",
"found": true
},
"name": "Kevin Stark",
"firstName": "Kevin",
"lastName": "Stark",
"slug": "kevinstark",
"email": "kstark@kqed.org",
"display_author_email": true,
"staff_mastheads": [
"science"
],
"title": "Senior Editor",
"bio": "Kevin is a senior editor for KQED Science, managing the station's health and climate desks. His journalism career began in the Pacific Northwest, and he later became a lead reporter for the San Francisco Public Press. His work has appeared in Pacific Standard magazine, the Energy News Network, the Center for Investigative Reporting's Reveal and WBEZ in Chicago. Kevin joined KQED in 2019, and has covered issues related to energy, wildfire, climate change and the environment.",
"avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1f646bf546a63d638e04ff23b52b0e79?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twitter": "starkkev",
"facebook": null,
"instagram": null,
"linkedin": null,
"sites": [
{
"site": "",
"roles": [
"editor"
]
},
{
"site": "news",
"roles": [
"editor"
]
},
{
"site": "science",
"roles": [
"administrator"
]
}
],
"headData": {
"title": "Kevin Stark | KQED",
"description": "Senior Editor",
"ogImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1f646bf546a63d638e04ff23b52b0e79?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1f646bf546a63d638e04ff23b52b0e79?s=600&d=blank&r=g"
},
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/author/kevinstark"
},
"eromero": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "11746",
"meta": {
"index": "authors_1716337520",
"id": "11746",
"found": true
},
"name": "Ezra David Romero",
"firstName": "Ezra David",
"lastName": "Romero",
"slug": "eromero",
"email": "eromero@kqed.org",
"display_author_email": true,
"staff_mastheads": [
"news",
"science"
],
"title": "Climate Reporter",
"bio": "Ezra David Romero is a climate reporter for KQED News. He covers the absence and excess of water in the Bay Area — think sea level rise, flooding and drought. For nearly a decade he’s covered how warming temperatures are altering the lives of Californians. He’s reported on farmers worried their pistachio trees aren’t getting enough sleep, families desperate for water, scientists studying dying giant sequoias, and alongside firefighters containing wildfires. His work has appeared on local stations across California and nationally on public radio shows like Morning Edition, Here and Now, All Things Considered and Science Friday. ",
"avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9c15bb8bab267e058708a9eeaeef16bf?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twitter": "ezraromero",
"bluesky": null,
"facebook": null,
"instagram": null,
"linkedin": null,
"sites": [
{
"site": "arts",
"roles": [
"editor"
]
},
{
"site": "news",
"roles": [
"editor"
]
},
{
"site": "science",
"roles": [
"editor"
]
},
{
"site": "liveblog",
"roles": [
"author"
]
}
],
"headData": {
"title": "Ezra David Romero | KQED",
"description": "Climate Reporter",
"ogImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9c15bb8bab267e058708a9eeaeef16bf?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9c15bb8bab267e058708a9eeaeef16bf?s=600&d=blank&r=g"
},
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/author/eromero"
}
},
"pagesReducer": {
"science_tag_climate-change": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_194",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "194",
"score": 7.9436955
},
"featImg": null,
"name": "climate change",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "climate change Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 198,
"slug": "climate-change",
"isLoading": false,
"title": "climate change",
"pageMeta": {
"site": "science",
"WpPageTemplate": "page-topic-editorial",
"currentPage": 13
},
"blocks": [
{
"blockName": "kqed/post-list",
"attrs": {
"layout": "cardArticle2",
"query": "posts/science?tag=climate-change",
"seeMore": false,
"paginated": true,
"page": 13
}
},
{
"blockName": "kqed/ad"
}
]
}
},
"pfsSessionReducer": {},
"postsReducer": {
"stream_live": {
"type": "live",
"id": "stream_live",
"audioUrl": "https://streams.kqed.org/kqedradio",
"title": "Live Stream",
"excerpt": "Live Stream information currently unavailable.",
"link": "/radio",
"featImg": "",
"label": {
"name": "KQED Live",
"link": "/"
}
},
"stream_kqedNewscast": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "stream_kqedNewscast",
"audioUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/RDnews/newscast.mp3?_=1",
"title": "KQED Newscast",
"featImg": "",
"label": {
"name": "88.5 FM",
"link": "/"
}
},
"science_1982776": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "science_1982776",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982776",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1684955736000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1684955736,
"format": "standard",
"title": "California Wants to Store Floodwaters Underground. It's Harder Than It Sounds",
"headTitle": "California Wants to Store Floodwaters Underground. It’s Harder Than It Sounds | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>For much of the last few decades, when the sky didn’t produce enough water for his cows and crops, Dino Giacomazzi — like most farmers in California’s southern Central Valley — pumped it from the earth. Underground aquifers, vast bank accounts of stored water, were drained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, after a historically wet winter, Giacomazzi and the state of California want to put some of that water back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is a no-brainer, win-win, multibenefit opportunity,” said Giacomazzi, standing on his Central Valley farm, which depends on groundwater to grow almonds, lettuce and tomatoes for pizza sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More water stored underground means fewer flooded farms, and more water available to farmers like him during the next inevitable drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982778\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982778 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A white man with dark brown hair and black sunglasses, wearing a black puffer jacket with an orange collared shirt and jeans, stands on a farm with a to-go cup in his hand. \" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dino Giacomazzi stands on his Central Valley farm, which depends on groundwater to grow almonds, lettuce and tomatoes for pizza sauce. \u003ccite>(Claire Harbage/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>An area nearly the size of New Orleans is already flooded downstream of Giacomazzi’s farm. State officials have warned more water is coming as warmer temperatures cause a record Sierra Nevada snowpack to melt. This week, however, they said some communities, such as Corcoran, should be safe from rising floodwaters because of levee improvements, favorable weather and efforts to spread the water upstream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But capturing the extra water is an opportunity that Giacomazzi worries is being missed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The condition we find ourselves in right now is that there are billions of gallons of water just flowing right through us, right on by, and heading down and filling the Tulare Lake,” Giacomazzi said, referencing the long-dried lake — once the largest west of the Mississippi River — that has come roaring back to life during this winter’s storms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California water officials are scrambling to catch as much of the floodwaters as they can. In January, as a series of atmospheric river storms \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/01/11/1148333208/storms-keep-pummeling-california-causing-widespread-flooding-and-evacuations\">blasted the state\u003c/a> with rain and snow, the state’s Department of Water Resources announced it was \u003ca href=\"https://water.ca.gov/News/News-Releases/2023/Jan-23/State-Agencies-Fast-track-Groundwater-Recharge-Pilot-Project\">accelerating permitting\u003c/a> for projects that put water back into the aquifers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Projects that capture available precipitation, stormwater or floodwaters to recharge depleted groundwater basins need to be ready to capture high flows when they are available during each wet season,” said Karla Nemeth, the agency’s director.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982779\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982779 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A small, gray donkey, as well as a donkey in complete shadow in the foreground, look out at a gravel road through a low wire fence on a sunny day. Farm buildings and green-and-brown lots lay beyond the road.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Giacomazzi’s donkeys look out over some of the farmland. \u003ccite>(Claire Harbage/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Two months later, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/03/10/governor-newsom-issues-executive-order-to-use-floodwater-to-recharge-and-store-groundwater/\">an executive order\u003c/a> making it easier for farmers to divert water onto their lands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in some parts of the Central Valley, like Giacomazzi’s, bureaucracy, water rights and a history of over-pumping are creating roadblocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The issue with these water systems in California is that every couple of miles in this state, it’s a completely different, independently operated situation,” Giacomazzi said. “There isn’t really a coordinating body that sits over the top if that says, ‘Here’s what we need to do. Let’s do it together.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A test for California’s climate future\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California has always experienced dramatic swings from drought to flood. Those \u003ca href=\"https://resources.ca.gov/-/media/CNRA-Website/Files/Initiatives/Water-Resilience/CA-Water-Supply-Strategy.pdf\">swings are expected to become more severe (PDF)\u003c/a> as temperatures rise due to human-caused climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In that sense, the situation playing out in California this year could be a window into the state’s climate future, said Daniel Mountjoy, director of resource stewardship for Sustainable Conservation, a California-based nonprofit water group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve worked in water my entire career and one of our sayings is never waste a good crisis,” he said, standing next to a field of purposely flooded grapevines north of Fresno. “This is our chance for everyone to be aware of what’s possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982780\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982780 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Two men, one white and one Black, both wearing baseball caps and unzipped jackets, talk to each other, one gesturing toward the vineyard they stand in with one arm raised.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Daniel Mountjoy (left), director of resource stewardship for Sustainable Conservation, a California-based nonprofit water group, talks with a colleague at a vineyard that is sinking water into the ground. \u003ccite>(Claire Harbage/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California water experts like Mountjoy, hydrologists and environmental watchdog groups have long warned that the Central Valley’s use of groundwater was unsustainable. Parts of the southern Central Valley that are now flooded have sunk by as much as 28 feet over the last few decades — deflated like punctured balloons — because so much water has been pumped from the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state aimed to address the problem with legislation in 2014 that requires local water agencies to bring their underground accounts into balance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to have to put in as much as we pump out,” said Eric Holder, an irrigation research assistant with the University of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982781\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982781\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Water is seen flowing out of pipes at a farm. \" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Water floods a field at an irrigation project run by the University of California.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Cutting groundwater use could be painful. A study by the Public Policy Institute of California last year found that an\u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/publication/priorities-for-californias-water/\"> estimated 500,000 acres\u003c/a> of farmland would have to go unplanted in the southern Central Valley over the next 20 years to help restore water underground. That’s even with increased capturing of stormwaters in a year like this. The region produces billions of dollars in almonds, pistachios, dairy and other produce every year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve got to find a safe landing pattern,” Mountjoy said. “Come up with a way to reduce the pumping or increase the groundwater supply.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Some farmers are flooding their fields\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>With so much of the state awash in water, the focus in California is on increasing groundwater supply — stashing more into the bank account — by flooding farmland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982782\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982782 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Most of the frame is taken up by slightly blurry, bright green grape leaves in the foreground. Beyond them, on the ground, two cement cisterns pour water onto the ground, with the dry land to the left looking light brown and dusty, and the wet land to the right looking dark brown and muddy.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Water is pumped into a vineyard, flooding the field. In some water districts, like Madera County’s in the heart of the Central Valley, farmers are being incentivized to use their existing infrastructure to flood their fields with free or reduced-cost water. \u003ccite>(Claire Harbage/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In some areas, like Giacomazzi’s, there isn’t enough incentive for farmers to flood their fields, or the infrastructure doesn’t exist to divert water from canals and streams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It takes a lot of money to excavate a basin and build the structures to divert water off the system,” said Mark Larsen, general manager of the Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District. “And then you have it sitting [dry] most of the time waiting for a year like this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In some water districts, like Madera County’s in the heart of the Central Valley, farmers are being incentivized to use their existing infrastructure to flood their fields with free or reduced-cost water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s our way to motivate people to take that water, spread it and get that water in the ground when it’s available in years like this,” said Thomas Greci, general manager of the Madera Irrigation District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982783\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982783 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A white man with a beard, wearing a baseball cap, a long-sleeved button-up powder blue shirt, blue jeans, and boots stands in a vineyard with his hands in his pockets, looking off to the side.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nick Davis stands in the vineyard he owns with his twin brother outside Madera. He’s been dumping water on his grapevines since the heavy rains started this winter, sinking more than four times the amount of water he typically uses on the vines into the ground. \u003ccite>(Claire Harbage/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nick Davis, who owns a vineyard with his twin brother outside Madera, has decided to participate. He’s been dumping water on his grapevines since the heavy rains started this winter, sinking more than four times the amount of water he typically uses on the vines into the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re all skeptical about trying new things,” Davis said. “But we feel it’s important to just do our part and put it back in the ground.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s hopeful the state will give him credit for all the water he’s returning to the aquifer, or pay him for the water he’s deposited. Incentives like that, Davis said, would make other farmers think more seriously about flooding their fields in the current moment and in wet years to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We understand that we are part of the problem,” Davis said. “But we also want to be part of the solution when it’s possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/\">https://www.npr.org\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=California+wants+to+store+floodwaters+underground.+It%27s+harder+than+it+sounds+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 1380,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 31
},
"modified": 1704846005,
"excerpt": "Even during epic floods, California is trying to prepare for the next drought by capturing water from this year's epic winter storms.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "Even during epic floods, California is trying to prepare for the next drought by capturing water from this year's epic winter storms.",
"title": "California Wants to Store Floodwaters Underground. It's Harder Than It Sounds | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "California Wants to Store Floodwaters Underground. It's Harder Than It Sounds",
"datePublished": "2023-05-24T12:15:36-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-09T16:20:05-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "california-wants-to-store-floodwaters-underground-its-harder-than-it-sounds",
"status": "publish",
"nprApiLink": "http://api.npr.org/query?id=1177216080&apiKey=MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004",
"nprStoryDate": "Wed, 24 May 2023 06:00:45 -0400",
"excludeFromSiteSearch": "Include",
"nprLastModifiedDate": "Wed, 24 May 2023 08:28:52 -0400",
"nprHtmlLink": "https://www.npr.org/2023/05/24/1177216080/california-wants-to-store-floodwaters-underground-its-harder-than-it-sounds?ft=nprml&f=1177216080",
"nprImageAgency": "NPR",
"source": "NPR",
"nprStoryId": "1177216080",
"sourceUrl": "https://www.npr.org",
"nprByline": "\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348779465/nathan-rott\">Nathan Rott\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/643722609/claire-harbage\">Claire Harbage\u003c/a>",
"sticky": false,
"nprImageCredit": "Claire Harbage",
"showOnAuthorArchivePages": "No",
"articleAge": "0",
"nprRetrievedStory": "1",
"nprPubDate": "Wed, 24 May 2023 08:28:00 -0400",
"path": "/science/1982776/california-wants-to-store-floodwaters-underground-its-harder-than-it-sounds",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For much of the last few decades, when the sky didn’t produce enough water for his cows and crops, Dino Giacomazzi — like most farmers in California’s southern Central Valley — pumped it from the earth. Underground aquifers, vast bank accounts of stored water, were drained.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, after a historically wet winter, Giacomazzi and the state of California want to put some of that water back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is a no-brainer, win-win, multibenefit opportunity,” said Giacomazzi, standing on his Central Valley farm, which depends on groundwater to grow almonds, lettuce and tomatoes for pizza sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More water stored underground means fewer flooded farms, and more water available to farmers like him during the next inevitable drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982778\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982778 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A white man with dark brown hair and black sunglasses, wearing a black puffer jacket with an orange collared shirt and jeans, stands on a farm with a to-go cup in his hand. \" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7315_slide-f4ad38703f1ea83d5235b8f204ab33ca99410025-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dino Giacomazzi stands on his Central Valley farm, which depends on groundwater to grow almonds, lettuce and tomatoes for pizza sauce. \u003ccite>(Claire Harbage/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>An area nearly the size of New Orleans is already flooded downstream of Giacomazzi’s farm. State officials have warned more water is coming as warmer temperatures cause a record Sierra Nevada snowpack to melt. This week, however, they said some communities, such as Corcoran, should be safe from rising floodwaters because of levee improvements, favorable weather and efforts to spread the water upstream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But capturing the extra water is an opportunity that Giacomazzi worries is being missed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The condition we find ourselves in right now is that there are billions of gallons of water just flowing right through us, right on by, and heading down and filling the Tulare Lake,” Giacomazzi said, referencing the long-dried lake — once the largest west of the Mississippi River — that has come roaring back to life during this winter’s storms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California water officials are scrambling to catch as much of the floodwaters as they can. In January, as a series of atmospheric river storms \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/01/11/1148333208/storms-keep-pummeling-california-causing-widespread-flooding-and-evacuations\">blasted the state\u003c/a> with rain and snow, the state’s Department of Water Resources announced it was \u003ca href=\"https://water.ca.gov/News/News-Releases/2023/Jan-23/State-Agencies-Fast-track-Groundwater-Recharge-Pilot-Project\">accelerating permitting\u003c/a> for projects that put water back into the aquifers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Projects that capture available precipitation, stormwater or floodwaters to recharge depleted groundwater basins need to be ready to capture high flows when they are available during each wet season,” said Karla Nemeth, the agency’s director.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982779\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982779 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A small, gray donkey, as well as a donkey in complete shadow in the foreground, look out at a gravel road through a low wire fence on a sunny day. Farm buildings and green-and-brown lots lay beyond the road.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230414-_dsc7388_slide-e1a31163a760bed0b4e1633bae0c23bc8a41adf1-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Giacomazzi’s donkeys look out over some of the farmland. \u003ccite>(Claire Harbage/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Two months later, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/03/10/governor-newsom-issues-executive-order-to-use-floodwater-to-recharge-and-store-groundwater/\">an executive order\u003c/a> making it easier for farmers to divert water onto their lands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in some parts of the Central Valley, like Giacomazzi’s, bureaucracy, water rights and a history of over-pumping are creating roadblocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The issue with these water systems in California is that every couple of miles in this state, it’s a completely different, independently operated situation,” Giacomazzi said. “There isn’t really a coordinating body that sits over the top if that says, ‘Here’s what we need to do. Let’s do it together.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A test for California’s climate future\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California has always experienced dramatic swings from drought to flood. Those \u003ca href=\"https://resources.ca.gov/-/media/CNRA-Website/Files/Initiatives/Water-Resilience/CA-Water-Supply-Strategy.pdf\">swings are expected to become more severe (PDF)\u003c/a> as temperatures rise due to human-caused climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In that sense, the situation playing out in California this year could be a window into the state’s climate future, said Daniel Mountjoy, director of resource stewardship for Sustainable Conservation, a California-based nonprofit water group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve worked in water my entire career and one of our sayings is never waste a good crisis,” he said, standing next to a field of purposely flooded grapevines north of Fresno. “This is our chance for everyone to be aware of what’s possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982780\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982780 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Two men, one white and one Black, both wearing baseball caps and unzipped jackets, talk to each other, one gesturing toward the vineyard they stand in with one arm raised.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1148_slide-fb7786a4ff4d53e45a28bd5a1e545f524af71028-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Daniel Mountjoy (left), director of resource stewardship for Sustainable Conservation, a California-based nonprofit water group, talks with a colleague at a vineyard that is sinking water into the ground. \u003ccite>(Claire Harbage/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>California water experts like Mountjoy, hydrologists and environmental watchdog groups have long warned that the Central Valley’s use of groundwater was unsustainable. Parts of the southern Central Valley that are now flooded have sunk by as much as 28 feet over the last few decades — deflated like punctured balloons — because so much water has been pumped from the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state aimed to address the problem with legislation in 2014 that requires local water agencies to bring their underground accounts into balance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to have to put in as much as we pump out,” said Eric Holder, an irrigation research assistant with the University of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982781\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982781\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Water is seen flowing out of pipes at a farm. \" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230411-_dsc9551_slide-f61a1b40b9d27519eefd649a788dcaad9238baa4-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Water floods a field at an irrigation project run by the University of California.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Cutting groundwater use could be painful. A study by the Public Policy Institute of California last year found that an\u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/publication/priorities-for-californias-water/\"> estimated 500,000 acres\u003c/a> of farmland would have to go unplanted in the southern Central Valley over the next 20 years to help restore water underground. That’s even with increased capturing of stormwaters in a year like this. The region produces billions of dollars in almonds, pistachios, dairy and other produce every year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve got to find a safe landing pattern,” Mountjoy said. “Come up with a way to reduce the pumping or increase the groundwater supply.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Some farmers are flooding their fields\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>With so much of the state awash in water, the focus in California is on increasing groundwater supply — stashing more into the bank account — by flooding farmland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982782\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982782 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Most of the frame is taken up by slightly blurry, bright green grape leaves in the foreground. Beyond them, on the ground, two cement cisterns pour water onto the ground, with the dry land to the left looking light brown and dusty, and the wet land to the right looking dark brown and muddy.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1022_slide-a0b041ac2be62456d3bbd1691767f8944145102f-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Water is pumped into a vineyard, flooding the field. In some water districts, like Madera County’s in the heart of the Central Valley, farmers are being incentivized to use their existing infrastructure to flood their fields with free or reduced-cost water. \u003ccite>(Claire Harbage/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In some areas, like Giacomazzi’s, there isn’t enough incentive for farmers to flood their fields, or the infrastructure doesn’t exist to divert water from canals and streams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It takes a lot of money to excavate a basin and build the structures to divert water off the system,” said Mark Larsen, general manager of the Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District. “And then you have it sitting [dry] most of the time waiting for a year like this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In some water districts, like Madera County’s in the heart of the Central Valley, farmers are being incentivized to use their existing infrastructure to flood their fields with free or reduced-cost water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s our way to motivate people to take that water, spread it and get that water in the ground when it’s available in years like this,” said Thomas Greci, general manager of the Madera Irrigation District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982783\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982783 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A white man with a beard, wearing a baseball cap, a long-sleeved button-up powder blue shirt, blue jeans, and boots stands in a vineyard with his hands in his pockets, looking off to the side.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/20230412-_dsc1077_slide-e34560e26d1272886404c7d51574dffa21c9998d-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nick Davis stands in the vineyard he owns with his twin brother outside Madera. He’s been dumping water on his grapevines since the heavy rains started this winter, sinking more than four times the amount of water he typically uses on the vines into the ground. \u003ccite>(Claire Harbage/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nick Davis, who owns a vineyard with his twin brother outside Madera, has decided to participate. He’s been dumping water on his grapevines since the heavy rains started this winter, sinking more than four times the amount of water he typically uses on the vines into the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re all skeptical about trying new things,” Davis said. “But we feel it’s important to just do our part and put it back in the ground.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s hopeful the state will give him credit for all the water he’s returning to the aquifer, or pay him for the water he’s deposited. Incentives like that, Davis said, would make other farmers think more seriously about flooding their fields in the current moment and in wet years to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We understand that we are part of the problem,” Davis said. “But we also want to be part of the solution when it’s possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/\">https://www.npr.org\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=California+wants+to+store+floodwaters+underground.+It%27s+harder+than+it+sounds+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/science/1982776/california-wants-to-store-floodwaters-underground-its-harder-than-it-sounds",
"authors": [
"byline_science_1982776"
],
"categories": [
"science_31",
"science_35",
"science_40",
"science_4450",
"science_98"
],
"tags": [
"science_3905",
"science_194",
"science_4414",
"science_3448",
"science_490",
"science_539"
],
"featImg": "science_1982777",
"label": "source_science_1982776"
},
"science_1982750": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "science_1982750",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982750",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1684529976000
]
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "blue-jellyfish-like-creatures-ride-california-waves-a-climate-change-indicator",
"title": "Blue Jellyfish-Like Creatures Ride California Waves: A Climate Change Indicator?",
"publishDate": 1684529976,
"format": "standard",
"headTitle": "Blue Jellyfish-Like Creatures Ride California Waves: A Climate Change Indicator? | KQED",
"labelTerm": {
"site": "science"
},
"content": "\u003cp>Surfers and beachgoers across the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california-coast\">California coast\u003c/a> have recently been treated to a mesmerizing spectacle: countless blue jellyfish-like creatures riding waves and washing up on sandy beaches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These captivating organisms, known as “by-the-wind sailors,” are Velella velella and they possess striking blue translucent bodies. They thrive in large numbers, primarily in the northern hemisphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They have a little stiff sail that sticks up from their floats and they use these little sails to capture the wind,” said Chrissy Piotrowski, senior collections manager of invertebrate zoology at the California Academy of Sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[ad fullwidth]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are related to the fearsome Portuguese man o’ war, often mistakenly identified as jellyfish. Still, unlike their notorious cousins, Velella velella stings are relatively mild, according to Steven Haddock, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“From our human point of view, we think of them as invading our shorelines, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual populations that are offshore,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982754\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982754\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023.jpg\" alt=\"A shot of a sandy beach with scattered seaweed and shells. Nearby, a blue, translucent organism similar to a jellyfish rests on the sand. Two people in the distance walk along the ocean.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blue, translucent Velella velella is seen washed ashore on Ocean Beach in San Francisco on May 18, 2023. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These ethereal beings resemble little sailboats and wash up on shore when ocean temperatures warm up and onshore wind events occur. The recent surge in the strandings of the see-through blue sea creatures could be a consequence of human-caused climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we see them a lot, it’s sort of like they’re putting up a huge billboard that says, ‘Hey, pay attention, things are changing,’” said Julia K. Parrish, a marine biologist and a professor at the University of Washington, who examined the creatures in a 2021 study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her research utilized community science data, analyzed stranding reports and found a potential association between rising ocean temperatures and the frequency of these events. Although concrete proof is yet to emerge, the warming trend in sea surface temperatures with links to human-caused climate change could mean more sightings of these azure, disc-like creatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A warmer ocean along the coastline means that those organisms that normally live around California are going to start to move north,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982760\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982760\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550.jpg\" alt=\"Dozens of light blue, translucent organisms comparable to jellyfish are washed ashore a sandy beach. Droplets of water and sand are sprinkled over the beings.\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1536\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stranded Velella velella on the Oregon Coast on June 13, 2016. \u003ccite>((jsseattle/iStock))\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She said one instance of a mass stranding isn’t enough to attach climate change as the reason behind the organism washing ashore. But when looking at an increase in strandings over the past two decades, Parrish said the case for the climate link is growing and more research is warranted to gain a greater understanding of the impact anthropogenic climate change has on the species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Julia K. Parrish, marine biologist, professor University of Washington\"]‘When we see signals coming from the ocean to the coast, we should pay attention. The Velella velella is an early-warning bell that we may be seeing some shifts.’[/pullquote]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we see signals coming from the ocean to the coast, we should pay attention,” she said. “The Velella velella is an early-warning bell that we may be seeing some shifts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conditions for Velella velella strandings may increase over the next year. Brian Garcia, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service Bay Area and Monterey regions, said the current onshore wind events would likely become more robust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you just pull back a little bit and blur your eyes, it’s been pretty much onshore for months,” he said. “We’ll see warm waters sticking around with us probably until next spring into next summer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s Sarah Mohamad contributed to this story.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
"blocks": [],
"excerpt": "Mesmerizing blue creatures, known as \"by-the-wind sailors,\" ride waves along the California coast. Their presence hints at climate change's impact on marine ecosystems, urging us to pay attention to these subtle indicators of environmental shifts.",
"status": "publish",
"parent": 0,
"modified": 1725576838,
"stats": {
"hasAudio": false,
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"paragraphCount": 17,
"wordCount": 626
},
"headData": {
"title": "Blue Jellyfish-Like Creatures Ride California Waves: A Climate Change Indicator? | KQED",
"description": "Mesmerizing blue creatures, known as "by-the-wind sailors," ride waves along the California coast. Their presence hints at climate change's impact on marine ecosystems, urging us to pay attention to these subtle indicators of environmental shifts.",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogDescription": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"twDescription": "",
"twImgId": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Blue Jellyfish-Like Creatures Ride California Waves: A Climate Change Indicator?",
"datePublished": "2023-05-19T13:59:36-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-09-05T15:53:58-07:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"sticky": false,
"excludeFromSiteSearch": "Include",
"articleAge": "0",
"path": "/science/1982750/blue-jellyfish-like-creatures-ride-california-waves-a-climate-change-indicator",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Surfers and beachgoers across the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california-coast\">California coast\u003c/a> have recently been treated to a mesmerizing spectacle: countless blue jellyfish-like creatures riding waves and washing up on sandy beaches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These captivating organisms, known as “by-the-wind sailors,” are Velella velella and they possess striking blue translucent bodies. They thrive in large numbers, primarily in the northern hemisphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They have a little stiff sail that sticks up from their floats and they use these little sails to capture the wind,” said Chrissy Piotrowski, senior collections manager of invertebrate zoology at the California Academy of Sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are related to the fearsome Portuguese man o’ war, often mistakenly identified as jellyfish. Still, unlike their notorious cousins, Velella velella stings are relatively mild, according to Steven Haddock, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“From our human point of view, we think of them as invading our shorelines, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual populations that are offshore,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982754\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982754\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023.jpg\" alt=\"A shot of a sandy beach with scattered seaweed and shells. Nearby, a blue, translucent organism similar to a jellyfish rests on the sand. Two people in the distance walk along the ocean.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/003_KQED_OBVelellaVelella_05182023-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blue, translucent Velella velella is seen washed ashore on Ocean Beach in San Francisco on May 18, 2023. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These ethereal beings resemble little sailboats and wash up on shore when ocean temperatures warm up and onshore wind events occur. The recent surge in the strandings of the see-through blue sea creatures could be a consequence of human-caused climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we see them a lot, it’s sort of like they’re putting up a huge billboard that says, ‘Hey, pay attention, things are changing,’” said Julia K. Parrish, a marine biologist and a professor at the University of Washington, who examined the creatures in a 2021 study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her research utilized community science data, analyzed stranding reports and found a potential association between rising ocean temperatures and the frequency of these events. Although concrete proof is yet to emerge, the warming trend in sea surface temperatures with links to human-caused climate change could mean more sightings of these azure, disc-like creatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A warmer ocean along the coastline means that those organisms that normally live around California are going to start to move north,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982760\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982760\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550.jpg\" alt=\"Dozens of light blue, translucent organisms comparable to jellyfish are washed ashore a sandy beach. Droplets of water and sand are sprinkled over the beings.\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1536\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/iStock-531994550-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stranded Velella velella on the Oregon Coast on June 13, 2016. \u003ccite>((jsseattle/iStock))\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She said one instance of a mass stranding isn’t enough to attach climate change as the reason behind the organism washing ashore. But when looking at an increase in strandings over the past two decades, Parrish said the case for the climate link is growing and more research is warranted to gain a greater understanding of the impact anthropogenic climate change has on the species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "‘When we see signals coming from the ocean to the coast, we should pay attention. The Velella velella is an early-warning bell that we may be seeing some shifts.’",
"name": "pullquote",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"size": "medium",
"align": "right",
"citation": "Julia K. Parrish, marine biologist, professor University of Washington",
"label": ""
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we see signals coming from the ocean to the coast, we should pay attention,” she said. “The Velella velella is an early-warning bell that we may be seeing some shifts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conditions for Velella velella strandings may increase over the next year. Brian Garcia, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service Bay Area and Monterey regions, said the current onshore wind events would likely become more robust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you just pull back a little bit and blur your eyes, it’s been pretty much onshore for months,” he said. “We’ll see warm waters sticking around with us probably until next spring into next summer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s Sarah Mohamad contributed to this story.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/science/1982750/blue-jellyfish-like-creatures-ride-california-waves-a-climate-change-indicator",
"authors": [
"11746"
],
"categories": [
"science_31",
"science_40",
"science_2873",
"science_4450"
],
"tags": [
"science_986",
"science_2455",
"science_194",
"science_2409",
"science_813",
"science_5183"
],
"featImg": "science_1982755",
"label": "science"
},
"science_1982673": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "science_1982673",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982673",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1683756094000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1683756094,
"format": "standard",
"title": "Mangoes and Agave in the Central Valley? California Farmers Try New Crops to Cope With Climate Change",
"headTitle": "Mangoes and Agave in the Central Valley? California Farmers Try New Crops to Cope With Climate Change | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>In a world of worsening heat waves, flooding, drought, glacial melting, megafires and other calamities of a changing climate, Gary Gragg is an optimist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As California warms, Gragg — a nurseryman, micro-scale farmer and tropical fruit enthusiast — looks forward to the day that he can grow and sell mangoes in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been banking on this since I was 10 years old and first heard about global warming,” said Gragg, 54, who has planted several mango trees, among other subtropical trees, in his orchard about 25 miles west of Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gragg’s little orchard might be the continent’s northernmost grove of mangoes, which normally are grown in places like Florida, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Northern California’s climate, he said, is becoming increasingly suitable for heat-loving, frost-sensitive mango trees, as well as avocados, cherimoyas and tropical palms, a specialty of his plant nursery \u003ca href=\"https://www.goldengatepalms.com/\">Golden Gate Palms\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Climate change isn’t all bad,” Gragg said. “People almost never talk about the positives of global warming, but there will be winners and losers everywhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mangoes may never become a mainstream crop in the northern half of California, but change is undoubtedly coming. Hustling to adapt, farmers around the state are experimenting with new, more sustainable crops and varieties bred to better tolerate drought, heat, humidity and other elements of the increasingly unruly climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Central Valley, farmers are investing in avocados, which are traditionally planted farther south, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/agave-drought-tolerant-california-crop\">agave\u003c/a>, a drought-resistant succulent grown in Mexico to make tequila.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Santa Cruz, one grower is trying a tropical exotic, lucuma, that is native to South American regions with mild winters. Others are growing tropical dragon fruit from the Central Coast down to San Diego.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some Sonoma and Napa Valley wineries have planted new vineyards in cooler coastal hills and valleys to escape the extreme heat of inland areas. And several Bay Area farmers have planted yangmei, a delicacy in China that can resist blights that ravage peaches and other popular California crops during rainy springs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align='left' citation='Gary Gragg, farmer, Sacramento Valley']‘People almost never talk about the positives of global warming, but there will be winners and losers everywhere.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Near the town of Linden, farmer Mike Machado, who served in the state Assembly and Senate from 1994 to 2008, is one of many growers in the arid San Joaquin Valley who have replaced some stone fruit and nut trees with olives, historically a minor California crop mostly produced in Mediterranean nations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re adjusting for survival,” Machado said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change essentially means that Southern California’s conditions are creeping north up the coast and into the valley, while Oregon and Washington are becoming more like Northern California. Precipitation, winds, fog and seasonal and daily temperature patterns — all of which determine which crops can be grown where — have all been altered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With climate change, we’re getting more erratic entries into fall and more erratic entries into spring,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/people/louise-ferguson\">Louise Ferguson\u003c/a>, a UC Davis plant physiologist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers predicted that “\u003ca href=\"https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006166\">climatic conditions by the middle to end of the 21st century will no longer support some of the main tree crops currently grown in California\u003c/a> … For some crops, production might no longer be possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fruit growers all around the world in the warm regions are worried about” warming trends, particularly in winter, said Eike Luedeling, co-author of the study and professor of horticultural sciences at Germany’s University of Bonn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UC Davis researchers are at the cutting edge of the push to adapt, working to make California’s lucrative walnut, pistachio and stone fruit orchards more resilient by selectively breeding for heat, disease and drought tolerance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About three-quarters of the nation’s fruits and nuts are grown in California, but fruit and nut trees are among the most vulnerable crops to climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luedeling’s research, for example, suggests that high winter temperatures could severely reduce walnut yields about once a decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ucanr.edu/?facultyid=26295\">Katherine Jarvis-Shean\u003c/a>, an orchard adviser with the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources program, said that effect will be magnified farther south: “That’s probably one in five years in the southern San Joaquin Valley,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Searching for genetic resilience\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Pistachio_Production_CA.pdf\">Pistachios have grown to be one of the state’s mightiest crops (PDF)\u003c/a>, with acreage of mature trees now covering more than 400,000 acres. The 2021 harvest totaled about 577,000 tons and was valued at nearly $3 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now crop scientists are working to save these valuable orchards from the effects of warming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warmer winters can cause male varieties to bloom and release pollen too late, after the female flowers have opened. This means less pollination and less fruit, and in 2015 many orchards suffered total crop failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patrick Brown, a UC Davis nut crop breeder, said farmers have solved this problem, at least for now, by grafting additional male varieties with different blooming schedules into the groves. “It’s a fairly easy hedge against that problem (of warmer winters),” he said. “No matter when the females bloom, there should be some pollen for them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Breeding programs to reduce nuts’ chill requirements are underway, but Brown said these trees have trade-offs: They tend to wake up earlier from winter dormancy, which can put premature foliage at risk of frost damage and expose young leaves to rainfall that causes blight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown is now leading a hunt for genetic resistance to walnut blight in the shady groves of the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards, a repository of nearly 9,000 grapevine and tree fruit varieties from around the world. This genetic bank, owned by UC Davis and jointly run with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, includes walnut trees of several species and hundreds of varieties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown’s experiment involves showering the walnuts with sprinklers in spring and summer and observing which develop the symptoms of blight — oil-black stains on the leaves and fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His research is focused on walnut trees grown from \u003ca href=\"https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-great-georgian-fruit-hunt-68708316/\">seeds collected in the Republic of Georgia\u003c/a>, where humidity creates conditions amenable to the disease. This likely has created localized genetic resistance — what Brown hopes to find.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It gets pretty hot and humid (in Georgia) during the growing season, and if there’s resistance to blight anywhere, that would probably be a good place to look,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align='left' citation='Claire Heinitz, research leader, US Department of Agriculture']‘Drought tolerance is a really tough nut to crack, because it doesn’t just involve roots — it involves every system of the plant.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still other problems are emerging as California’s weather patterns grow more erratic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early fall rains have been a problem for walnuts, spoiling ripening fruits. And heat waves — especially when they follow a rain event — can cause fruit to drop or spoil. Almost 40% of last fall’s walnut crop was lost when Central Valley temperatures approached 115 degrees, according to \u003ca href=\"https://walnuts.org/news/robert-verloop-named-executive-director-and-ceo-for-the-california-walnut-board-and-california-walnut-commission/\">Robert Verloop\u003c/a>, executive director of the California Walnut Board and the California Walnut Commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walnut growers “are worried about heat waves, and they should be,” Jarvis-Shean said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another UC Davis study at the Wolfskill orchards aims to identify genes for heat tolerance in European walnut trees. Claire Heinitz, a U.S. Department of Agriculture research leader, said trees are sampled with an instrument that measures photosynthesis. The idea is to find unique individuals that maintain basic functions under brutal heat conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, she said, the project, led by researchers \u003ca href=\"https://mcelrone.ucdavis.edu/people/andrew-j-mcelrone\">Andrew McElrone\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://mcelrone.ucdavis.edu/people/mina-momayyezi\">Mina Momayyezi\u003c/a>, might be expanded to include grapes, which are highly prone to heat damage, as well as pistachios and almonds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heinitz said much of the research aims to create hardier root systems, which can protect the trees against soil pathogens, salts and other stressors. However, breeding \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2021/09/california-drought-farmers/\">drought resilience\u003c/a> into California’s major crops may be a more elusive goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Drought tolerance is a really tough nut to crack, because it doesn’t just involve roots — it involves every system of the plant,” Heinitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982676\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982676\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A man uses a sensor on a leaf of an almond tree. \" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Researcher Andrew McElrone uses a porometer on an almond tree leaf at the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards near Winters. \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>California’s subtropical future?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The winter of 2023 was an unusually cold one, but it hardly suggests a trend toward nut-friendly weather.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said last month that the low temperatures of the past several months were “a fluke” amid a long-term trajectory of increasingly warm winters. In fact, he said, “this may well be the coldest winter that some places will see now for the rest of our lives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If true, that could mean smooth sailing for Chiles Wilson Jr. and his family. A fifth-generation Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta farmer, Wilson has planted thousands of avocado trees of a dozen varieties near Walnut Grove and Cortland. Now the fruit, harvested almost year-round, is a key component of the family’s fruit-packing company, \u003ca href=\"https://www.rivermaid.com/\">Rivermaid\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most California avocados are grown between San Diego and Santa Barbara, covering nearly 50,000 acres and producing more than $300 million in direct farm sales.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wilson recalls that when he pitched the avocado idea to his family nearly a decade ago, they discouraged him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They said, ‘Nah, they won’t produce here,’” he said. “And I said, ‘But that one does.’” He pointed to a large, fruit-laden avocado tree within sight of the farm’s main office. They gave it a shot, planting more than 600 avocado trees per acre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wilson knows, even in an era of warming, that his avocado orchards are a gamble. “We’re one killer freeze away from being wiped out,” Wilson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, this winter, the temperature dipped below freezing 16 times in the Wilsons’ avocado groves, yet the trees survived and are producing fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982677\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982677\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Avocados seen hanging from a tree.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gragg holds Pinkerton avocados that he grows in the Sacramento Valley. \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Still other fruits, barely known to most Americans, could rise to greatness in a warmer California. Charlie Lucero, a home orchardist in Menlo Park, is helping introduce Californians to yangmei. Lychee-like red orbs with pits inside like a cherry and a taste like pomegranate and pine resin, yangmei are typically grown in China.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now Lucero is serving as a consultant and marketer for several Northern California growers who are preparing to harvest their second crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lucero said the fruit — a relative of the bayberry — has “zero chill requirement” and is also resistant to fungi and bacteria that can plague stone fruit growers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we get a late rain, it doesn’t hurt us,” Lucero said of his small yangmei collaborative, called \u003ca href=\"http://calmei-yangmei.com/\">Calmei\u003c/a>. “These trees are well-suited for California, where the weather is becoming less predictable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lucero said they’ve been retailing for about $60 a pound. Last year’s crop totaled about 2.5 tons; this year, he expects about twice that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An orchard project near Santa Cruz offers another glimpse into California’s possible future of farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nate Blackmore of \u003ca href=\"https://www.wildlandsplants.com/\">Wildlands Farm and Nursery\u003c/a> is planting several acres with subtropical fruits, mostly from Central and South America: white sapote, ice cream bean, cherimoya, uvaia, dragon fruit and guabiroba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The main attraction of his up-and-coming orchard will be \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/honey-sweeteners/lucuma\">lucuma\u003c/a> trees. Native to western South America, lucuma resembles a round avocado with a pointed bottom, with mealy, sweet flesh like a yam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All these species are tolerant of frost — but just barely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s so scary having all these subtropical fruit trees, and wondering how many would survive a bad freeze,” Blackmore said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet another tropical crop could gain an advantage from California’s warming climate: coffee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s being grown at orchards in Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Diego counties, and it’s not cheap: One company is selling organic coffee beans for \u003ca href=\"https://frinjcoffee.com/product/good-land-organics-geisha-3/\">$286 per pound\u003c/a>. But the trees are hardly sustainable in those regions, which are reliant on water imported from Northern California and the Colorado River: Watering them takes at least \u003ca href=\"https://www.britannica.com/topic/coffee-production\">several feet of water\u003c/a> per year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another tropical fruit more suitable for drought-prone land is the pitaya, or dragon fruit. Grown from tropical cactus plants, it can be farmed in California with as little as 1.5 feet of applied water — a third of what citrus and avocados need, according to Ramiro Lobo, a San Diego County farm adviser with the UC Cooperative Extension program. His program has distributed about 50,000 dragon fruit cactus cuttings to small farmers from San Luis Obispo down to San Diego and at least 1,000 acres are in production.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Dry farming to cope with water scarcity\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Among all the pressures for California farmers, none is so persistent and serious as water supply. The agriculture industry uses about 80% of the water Californians consume. During droughts, farmers — especially those growing some 4 million acres of grapevines and fruit trees — pump water from the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This has caused thousands of drinking water wells to run dry and land to sink \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/water/2023/02/california-depleted-groundwater-storms/\">as aquifers shrivel\u003c/a>. The state passed a new groundwater law in 2014 that is beginning to take effect, and could force as much as \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/publication/policy-brief-the-future-of-agriculture-in-the-san-joaquin-valley/\">900,000 acres\u003c/a> of irrigated cropland, mostly in the arid San Joaquin Valley, out of production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this is inconsequential to farmers like Tristan Benson. Based in western Sonoma County, he practices dry farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Benson and his partners usually harvest 20 to 30 tons of heirloom wheat and barley from loamy hillsides, selling the grain for use in bread, beer and distilling. To grow these staples, they just need a little rain, forgoing \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/01/colorado-river-water/\">the irrigation that other growers, like those in the Central and Imperial valleys, rely upon\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even through recent droughts, Benson said, he has always pulled in a crop. “The closer to the coast we are, the better we do,” he said. Fields are planted in October or November, and about a week after the first heavy rain, the seeds germinate, and usually the ground stays moist until the summer harvest time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Benson’s methods could be a model for sustainability for other California growers, who have “planted millions of acres of trees that always need water, and our reservoirs have at most a three-year supply,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982678\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982678 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A 40-ish white woman with long, dark brown hair, olive pants, boots, and a mauve long-sleeved top and a purple vest, stands in a grassy, shaded lane between two verdant, leafy rows of trees.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Claire Heinitz, a scientist with the US Department of of Agriculture, helps manage the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards, a collection of thousands of crop varieties used for breeding experiments \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Benson thinks a smart farming model is to grow winter crops without irrigation, and when reservoirs are full — as they are now — plant irrigated fields with annual summer fruits and vegetables. Apples, tomatoes, pears, grapes and potatoes can all be dry-farmed in cooler regions; farther inland and to the south, dry farming is more challenging, at least for most crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Geoff Vanden Heuvel, director of regulatory and economic affairs at the Milk Producers Council, said winter farming of grain and feed crops, with just a few inches of irrigation water, could help feed livestock with less groundwater use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a quarter of the state’s feed crops are grown in areas entirely reliant on groundwater, and this dependency will likely translate into fewer California cows in the future, he said. By the 2040s, when the groundwater law takes full effect, dairy herds are expected to drop by about 10%. “That’s about 130,000 fewer cows,” Vanden Heuvel said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferguson of UC Davis said Central Valley farmers have grown accustomed to harvesting maximum yields because “we had more reliable water. Maybe now, when we don’t have the water or it’s more expensive, they’ll have to settle for a lower yield.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://caes.ucdavis.edu/people/daniel-sumner\">Daniel Sumner\u003c/a>, a UC Davis professor of agricultural and resource economics, said California’s agricultural identity already has changed drastically over time. In its earliest days of statehood, California was a major producer of \u003ca href=\"https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Wheat_Production_CA.pdf\">rain-watered wheat, grown on several million acres (PDF)\u003c/a>. When irrigation became ubiquitous, so did specialty crops that thrive in a hot, dry climate but need water in the summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Almonds now cover more than 1.6 million acres of the Central Valley, and pistachios have seen explosive growth, “from almost nothing to a $2 billion crop in a few decades,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that predicting what crops will be trending in California in several decades is impossible, “but it’s hard to picture that we wouldn’t stay a specialty crop producer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Economic turbulence, too\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s not just the changing climate that’s guiding the future of one of California’s top industries. In the decades to come, growers will experience economic shifts, competition from imports and rising labor costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The increasing minimum wage, for example, has made even some high-value crops, like table olives, unprofitable to grow in California unless machines prune the trees and pick the fruit. \u003ca href=\"https://ucanr.edu/sites/mecholive/Overview_-_Objectives/\">Hand-based labor can suck up 45% to 60% of gross revenue\u003c/a>, largely because olives must be carefully handled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.atlasbig.com/en-us/countries-olive-production#:~:text=Worldwide%2019%2C464%2C495%20tonnes%20of%20olive%20is%20produced%20per,Morocco%20is%20the%20third%20largest%20producer%20of%20olive.\">Spain, the world’s superproducer of olives\u003c/a>, generates a cheaper product and has forced California growers to adapt, said Dennis Burreson, vice president at the Musco Family Olive Co., based in Tracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burreson said machine harvesting is now becoming standard for many tree crops, adding, “eventually, I think hand-harvesting of many orchard crops is going to be in the rearview mirror.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the state’s mighty walnut industry has been knocked on its side as oversupply and competition from China have sent prices crashing. In 2013, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2022_Ag_Stats_Review.pdf\">a ton of walnuts sold off the farm for $3,700 (PDF)\u003c/a>. Now it’s about $700 per ton. On top of that, growers “are still sitting on 130,000 tons of the 2021 crop,” Verloop, of the California Walnut Board and the California Walnut Commission, said, with some of that excess distributed to food banks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So many walnut growers are now reportedly scheduled to have their trees uprooted and chipped that removal services can’t keep up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sumner said the economic upheaval of the walnut industry “doesn’t look like it’s turning around.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown suspects that labor costs and land values will be just as strong drivers of agriculture’s evolution as the changing climate. Other regions of the world are producing crops for less, he said, which means California’s specialties will be niche and higher-quality produce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whatever is going to be grown in California in 50 years,” he said, “is what can’t be grown elsewhere or what can be grown better here.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 3217,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 83
},
"modified": 1704846014,
"excerpt": "The future of farming in California is changing as the planet warms, altering the rain and heat patterns that guide which crops are grown where. 'We're adjusting for survival,' one grower said.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "The future of farming in California is changing as the planet warms, altering the rain and heat patterns that guide which crops are grown where. 'We're adjusting for survival,' one grower said.",
"title": "Mangoes and Agave in the Central Valley? California Farmers Try New Crops to Cope With Climate Change | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Mangoes and Agave in the Central Valley? California Farmers Try New Crops to Cope With Climate Change",
"datePublished": "2023-05-10T15:01:34-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-09T16:20:14-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "mangoes-and-agave-in-the-central-valley-california-farmers-try-new-crops-to-cope-with-climate-change",
"status": "publish",
"sourceUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/news/affiliate/calmatters",
"nprByline": "\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/author/alastair-bland/\">Alastair Bland\u003c/a>",
"excludeFromSiteSearch": "Include",
"sticky": false,
"source": "CalMatters",
"showOnAuthorArchivePages": "No",
"articleAge": "0",
"path": "/science/1982673/mangoes-and-agave-in-the-central-valley-california-farmers-try-new-crops-to-cope-with-climate-change",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In a world of worsening heat waves, flooding, drought, glacial melting, megafires and other calamities of a changing climate, Gary Gragg is an optimist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As California warms, Gragg — a nurseryman, micro-scale farmer and tropical fruit enthusiast — looks forward to the day that he can grow and sell mangoes in Northern California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been banking on this since I was 10 years old and first heard about global warming,” said Gragg, 54, who has planted several mango trees, among other subtropical trees, in his orchard about 25 miles west of Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gragg’s little orchard might be the continent’s northernmost grove of mangoes, which normally are grown in places like Florida, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Northern California’s climate, he said, is becoming increasingly suitable for heat-loving, frost-sensitive mango trees, as well as avocados, cherimoyas and tropical palms, a specialty of his plant nursery \u003ca href=\"https://www.goldengatepalms.com/\">Golden Gate Palms\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Climate change isn’t all bad,” Gragg said. “People almost never talk about the positives of global warming, but there will be winners and losers everywhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mangoes may never become a mainstream crop in the northern half of California, but change is undoubtedly coming. Hustling to adapt, farmers around the state are experimenting with new, more sustainable crops and varieties bred to better tolerate drought, heat, humidity and other elements of the increasingly unruly climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Central Valley, farmers are investing in avocados, which are traditionally planted farther south, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/agave-drought-tolerant-california-crop\">agave\u003c/a>, a drought-resistant succulent grown in Mexico to make tequila.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Santa Cruz, one grower is trying a tropical exotic, lucuma, that is native to South American regions with mild winters. Others are growing tropical dragon fruit from the Central Coast down to San Diego.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some Sonoma and Napa Valley wineries have planted new vineyards in cooler coastal hills and valleys to escape the extreme heat of inland areas. And several Bay Area farmers have planted yangmei, a delicacy in China that can resist blights that ravage peaches and other popular California crops during rainy springs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "‘People almost never talk about the positives of global warming, but there will be winners and losers everywhere.’",
"name": "pullquote",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"align": "left",
"citation": "Gary Gragg, farmer, Sacramento Valley",
"label": ""
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Near the town of Linden, farmer Mike Machado, who served in the state Assembly and Senate from 1994 to 2008, is one of many growers in the arid San Joaquin Valley who have replaced some stone fruit and nut trees with olives, historically a minor California crop mostly produced in Mediterranean nations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re adjusting for survival,” Machado said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change essentially means that Southern California’s conditions are creeping north up the coast and into the valley, while Oregon and Washington are becoming more like Northern California. Precipitation, winds, fog and seasonal and daily temperature patterns — all of which determine which crops can be grown where — have all been altered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With climate change, we’re getting more erratic entries into fall and more erratic entries into spring,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/people/louise-ferguson\">Louise Ferguson\u003c/a>, a UC Davis plant physiologist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers predicted that “\u003ca href=\"https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006166\">climatic conditions by the middle to end of the 21st century will no longer support some of the main tree crops currently grown in California\u003c/a> … For some crops, production might no longer be possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fruit growers all around the world in the warm regions are worried about” warming trends, particularly in winter, said Eike Luedeling, co-author of the study and professor of horticultural sciences at Germany’s University of Bonn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UC Davis researchers are at the cutting edge of the push to adapt, working to make California’s lucrative walnut, pistachio and stone fruit orchards more resilient by selectively breeding for heat, disease and drought tolerance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About three-quarters of the nation’s fruits and nuts are grown in California, but fruit and nut trees are among the most vulnerable crops to climate change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luedeling’s research, for example, suggests that high winter temperatures could severely reduce walnut yields about once a decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ucanr.edu/?facultyid=26295\">Katherine Jarvis-Shean\u003c/a>, an orchard adviser with the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources program, said that effect will be magnified farther south: “That’s probably one in five years in the southern San Joaquin Valley,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Searching for genetic resilience\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Pistachio_Production_CA.pdf\">Pistachios have grown to be one of the state’s mightiest crops (PDF)\u003c/a>, with acreage of mature trees now covering more than 400,000 acres. The 2021 harvest totaled about 577,000 tons and was valued at nearly $3 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now crop scientists are working to save these valuable orchards from the effects of warming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warmer winters can cause male varieties to bloom and release pollen too late, after the female flowers have opened. This means less pollination and less fruit, and in 2015 many orchards suffered total crop failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patrick Brown, a UC Davis nut crop breeder, said farmers have solved this problem, at least for now, by grafting additional male varieties with different blooming schedules into the groves. “It’s a fairly easy hedge against that problem (of warmer winters),” he said. “No matter when the females bloom, there should be some pollen for them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Breeding programs to reduce nuts’ chill requirements are underway, but Brown said these trees have trade-offs: They tend to wake up earlier from winter dormancy, which can put premature foliage at risk of frost damage and expose young leaves to rainfall that causes blight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown is now leading a hunt for genetic resistance to walnut blight in the shady groves of the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards, a repository of nearly 9,000 grapevine and tree fruit varieties from around the world. This genetic bank, owned by UC Davis and jointly run with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, includes walnut trees of several species and hundreds of varieties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown’s experiment involves showering the walnuts with sprinklers in spring and summer and observing which develop the symptoms of blight — oil-black stains on the leaves and fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His research is focused on walnut trees grown from \u003ca href=\"https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-great-georgian-fruit-hunt-68708316/\">seeds collected in the Republic of Georgia\u003c/a>, where humidity creates conditions amenable to the disease. This likely has created localized genetic resistance — what Brown hopes to find.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It gets pretty hot and humid (in Georgia) during the growing season, and if there’s resistance to blight anywhere, that would probably be a good place to look,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "‘Drought tolerance is a really tough nut to crack, because it doesn’t just involve roots — it involves every system of the plant.’",
"name": "pullquote",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"align": "left",
"citation": "Claire Heinitz, research leader, US Department of Agriculture",
"label": ""
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still other problems are emerging as California’s weather patterns grow more erratic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early fall rains have been a problem for walnuts, spoiling ripening fruits. And heat waves — especially when they follow a rain event — can cause fruit to drop or spoil. Almost 40% of last fall’s walnut crop was lost when Central Valley temperatures approached 115 degrees, according to \u003ca href=\"https://walnuts.org/news/robert-verloop-named-executive-director-and-ceo-for-the-california-walnut-board-and-california-walnut-commission/\">Robert Verloop\u003c/a>, executive director of the California Walnut Board and the California Walnut Commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walnut growers “are worried about heat waves, and they should be,” Jarvis-Shean said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another UC Davis study at the Wolfskill orchards aims to identify genes for heat tolerance in European walnut trees. Claire Heinitz, a U.S. Department of Agriculture research leader, said trees are sampled with an instrument that measures photosynthesis. The idea is to find unique individuals that maintain basic functions under brutal heat conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, she said, the project, led by researchers \u003ca href=\"https://mcelrone.ucdavis.edu/people/andrew-j-mcelrone\">Andrew McElrone\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://mcelrone.ucdavis.edu/people/mina-momayyezi\">Mina Momayyezi\u003c/a>, might be expanded to include grapes, which are highly prone to heat damage, as well as pistachios and almonds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heinitz said much of the research aims to create hardier root systems, which can protect the trees against soil pathogens, salts and other stressors. However, breeding \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2021/09/california-drought-farmers/\">drought resilience\u003c/a> into California’s major crops may be a more elusive goal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Drought tolerance is a really tough nut to crack, because it doesn’t just involve roots — it involves every system of the plant,” Heinitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982676\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982676\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A man uses a sensor on a leaf of an almond tree. \" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-16-CM.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Researcher Andrew McElrone uses a porometer on an almond tree leaf at the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards near Winters. \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>California’s subtropical future?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The winter of 2023 was an unusually cold one, but it hardly suggests a trend toward nut-friendly weather.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said last month that the low temperatures of the past several months were “a fluke” amid a long-term trajectory of increasingly warm winters. In fact, he said, “this may well be the coldest winter that some places will see now for the rest of our lives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If true, that could mean smooth sailing for Chiles Wilson Jr. and his family. A fifth-generation Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta farmer, Wilson has planted thousands of avocado trees of a dozen varieties near Walnut Grove and Cortland. Now the fruit, harvested almost year-round, is a key component of the family’s fruit-packing company, \u003ca href=\"https://www.rivermaid.com/\">Rivermaid\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most California avocados are grown between San Diego and Santa Barbara, covering nearly 50,000 acres and producing more than $300 million in direct farm sales.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wilson recalls that when he pitched the avocado idea to his family nearly a decade ago, they discouraged him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They said, ‘Nah, they won’t produce here,’” he said. “And I said, ‘But that one does.’” He pointed to a large, fruit-laden avocado tree within sight of the farm’s main office. They gave it a shot, planting more than 600 avocado trees per acre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wilson knows, even in an era of warming, that his avocado orchards are a gamble. “We’re one killer freeze away from being wiped out,” Wilson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, this winter, the temperature dipped below freezing 16 times in the Wilsons’ avocado groves, yet the trees survived and are producing fruit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982677\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982677\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Avocados seen hanging from a tree.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-13-CM.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gragg holds Pinkerton avocados that he grows in the Sacramento Valley. \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Still other fruits, barely known to most Americans, could rise to greatness in a warmer California. Charlie Lucero, a home orchardist in Menlo Park, is helping introduce Californians to yangmei. Lychee-like red orbs with pits inside like a cherry and a taste like pomegranate and pine resin, yangmei are typically grown in China.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now Lucero is serving as a consultant and marketer for several Northern California growers who are preparing to harvest their second crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lucero said the fruit — a relative of the bayberry — has “zero chill requirement” and is also resistant to fungi and bacteria that can plague stone fruit growers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we get a late rain, it doesn’t hurt us,” Lucero said of his small yangmei collaborative, called \u003ca href=\"http://calmei-yangmei.com/\">Calmei\u003c/a>. “These trees are well-suited for California, where the weather is becoming less predictable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lucero said they’ve been retailing for about $60 a pound. Last year’s crop totaled about 2.5 tons; this year, he expects about twice that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An orchard project near Santa Cruz offers another glimpse into California’s possible future of farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nate Blackmore of \u003ca href=\"https://www.wildlandsplants.com/\">Wildlands Farm and Nursery\u003c/a> is planting several acres with subtropical fruits, mostly from Central and South America: white sapote, ice cream bean, cherimoya, uvaia, dragon fruit and guabiroba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The main attraction of his up-and-coming orchard will be \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/honey-sweeteners/lucuma\">lucuma\u003c/a> trees. Native to western South America, lucuma resembles a round avocado with a pointed bottom, with mealy, sweet flesh like a yam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All these species are tolerant of frost — but just barely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s so scary having all these subtropical fruit trees, and wondering how many would survive a bad freeze,” Blackmore said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet another tropical crop could gain an advantage from California’s warming climate: coffee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s being grown at orchards in Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Diego counties, and it’s not cheap: One company is selling organic coffee beans for \u003ca href=\"https://frinjcoffee.com/product/good-land-organics-geisha-3/\">$286 per pound\u003c/a>. But the trees are hardly sustainable in those regions, which are reliant on water imported from Northern California and the Colorado River: Watering them takes at least \u003ca href=\"https://www.britannica.com/topic/coffee-production\">several feet of water\u003c/a> per year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another tropical fruit more suitable for drought-prone land is the pitaya, or dragon fruit. Grown from tropical cactus plants, it can be farmed in California with as little as 1.5 feet of applied water — a third of what citrus and avocados need, according to Ramiro Lobo, a San Diego County farm adviser with the UC Cooperative Extension program. His program has distributed about 50,000 dragon fruit cactus cuttings to small farmers from San Luis Obispo down to San Diego and at least 1,000 acres are in production.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Dry farming to cope with water scarcity\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Among all the pressures for California farmers, none is so persistent and serious as water supply. The agriculture industry uses about 80% of the water Californians consume. During droughts, farmers — especially those growing some 4 million acres of grapevines and fruit trees — pump water from the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This has caused thousands of drinking water wells to run dry and land to sink \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/water/2023/02/california-depleted-groundwater-storms/\">as aquifers shrivel\u003c/a>. The state passed a new groundwater law in 2014 that is beginning to take effect, and could force as much as \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/publication/policy-brief-the-future-of-agriculture-in-the-san-joaquin-valley/\">900,000 acres\u003c/a> of irrigated cropland, mostly in the arid San Joaquin Valley, out of production.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this is inconsequential to farmers like Tristan Benson. Based in western Sonoma County, he practices dry farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Benson and his partners usually harvest 20 to 30 tons of heirloom wheat and barley from loamy hillsides, selling the grain for use in bread, beer and distilling. To grow these staples, they just need a little rain, forgoing \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/01/colorado-river-water/\">the irrigation that other growers, like those in the Central and Imperial valleys, rely upon\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even through recent droughts, Benson said, he has always pulled in a crop. “The closer to the coast we are, the better we do,” he said. Fields are planted in October or November, and about a week after the first heavy rain, the seeds germinate, and usually the ground stays moist until the summer harvest time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Benson’s methods could be a model for sustainability for other California growers, who have “planted millions of acres of trees that always need water, and our reservoirs have at most a three-year supply,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982678\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982678 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A 40-ish white woman with long, dark brown hair, olive pants, boots, and a mauve long-sleeved top and a purple vest, stands in a grassy, shaded lane between two verdant, leafy rows of trees.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/05/05042023-Experimental-Farms-RL-19-CM.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Claire Heinitz, a scientist with the US Department of of Agriculture, helps manage the Wolfskill Experimental Orchards, a collection of thousands of crop varieties used for breeding experiments \u003ccite>(Rahul Lal/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Benson thinks a smart farming model is to grow winter crops without irrigation, and when reservoirs are full — as they are now — plant irrigated fields with annual summer fruits and vegetables. Apples, tomatoes, pears, grapes and potatoes can all be dry-farmed in cooler regions; farther inland and to the south, dry farming is more challenging, at least for most crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Geoff Vanden Heuvel, director of regulatory and economic affairs at the Milk Producers Council, said winter farming of grain and feed crops, with just a few inches of irrigation water, could help feed livestock with less groundwater use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a quarter of the state’s feed crops are grown in areas entirely reliant on groundwater, and this dependency will likely translate into fewer California cows in the future, he said. By the 2040s, when the groundwater law takes full effect, dairy herds are expected to drop by about 10%. “That’s about 130,000 fewer cows,” Vanden Heuvel said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ferguson of UC Davis said Central Valley farmers have grown accustomed to harvesting maximum yields because “we had more reliable water. Maybe now, when we don’t have the water or it’s more expensive, they’ll have to settle for a lower yield.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://caes.ucdavis.edu/people/daniel-sumner\">Daniel Sumner\u003c/a>, a UC Davis professor of agricultural and resource economics, said California’s agricultural identity already has changed drastically over time. In its earliest days of statehood, California was a major producer of \u003ca href=\"https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Wheat_Production_CA.pdf\">rain-watered wheat, grown on several million acres (PDF)\u003c/a>. When irrigation became ubiquitous, so did specialty crops that thrive in a hot, dry climate but need water in the summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Almonds now cover more than 1.6 million acres of the Central Valley, and pistachios have seen explosive growth, “from almost nothing to a $2 billion crop in a few decades,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that predicting what crops will be trending in California in several decades is impossible, “but it’s hard to picture that we wouldn’t stay a specialty crop producer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Economic turbulence, too\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s not just the changing climate that’s guiding the future of one of California’s top industries. In the decades to come, growers will experience economic shifts, competition from imports and rising labor costs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The increasing minimum wage, for example, has made even some high-value crops, like table olives, unprofitable to grow in California unless machines prune the trees and pick the fruit. \u003ca href=\"https://ucanr.edu/sites/mecholive/Overview_-_Objectives/\">Hand-based labor can suck up 45% to 60% of gross revenue\u003c/a>, largely because olives must be carefully handled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.atlasbig.com/en-us/countries-olive-production#:~:text=Worldwide%2019%2C464%2C495%20tonnes%20of%20olive%20is%20produced%20per,Morocco%20is%20the%20third%20largest%20producer%20of%20olive.\">Spain, the world’s superproducer of olives\u003c/a>, generates a cheaper product and has forced California growers to adapt, said Dennis Burreson, vice president at the Musco Family Olive Co., based in Tracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burreson said machine harvesting is now becoming standard for many tree crops, adding, “eventually, I think hand-harvesting of many orchard crops is going to be in the rearview mirror.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the state’s mighty walnut industry has been knocked on its side as oversupply and competition from China have sent prices crashing. In 2013, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2022_Ag_Stats_Review.pdf\">a ton of walnuts sold off the farm for $3,700 (PDF)\u003c/a>. Now it’s about $700 per ton. On top of that, growers “are still sitting on 130,000 tons of the 2021 crop,” Verloop, of the California Walnut Board and the California Walnut Commission, said, with some of that excess distributed to food banks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So many walnut growers are now reportedly scheduled to have their trees uprooted and chipped that removal services can’t keep up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sumner said the economic upheaval of the walnut industry “doesn’t look like it’s turning around.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown suspects that labor costs and land values will be just as strong drivers of agriculture’s evolution as the changing climate. Other regions of the world are producing crops for less, he said, which means California’s specialties will be niche and higher-quality produce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whatever is going to be grown in California in 50 years,” he said, “is what can’t be grown elsewhere or what can be grown better here.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/science/1982673/mangoes-and-agave-in-the-central-valley-california-farmers-try-new-crops-to-cope-with-climate-change",
"authors": [
"byline_science_1982673"
],
"categories": [
"science_31",
"science_35",
"science_40",
"science_4450"
],
"tags": [
"science_392",
"science_5178",
"science_194",
"science_1452"
],
"featImg": "science_1982675",
"label": "source_science_1982673"
},
"science_1982494": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "science_1982494",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982494",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1682716511000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1682716511,
"format": "standard",
"title": "California's Air Board Votes to Scale Down Fleets of Diesel Trucks",
"headTitle": "California’s Air Board Votes to Scale Down Fleets of Diesel Trucks | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The California Air Resources Board approved an ambitious plan today to phase out its diesel truck fleets, from semi-trucks to delivery vans and garbage trucks, despite the opposition of industry groups who said the plan would be near impossible for them to enact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is the air board’s latest regulation geared at cleaning up toxic air quality and fighting climate change, and comes a day after the same body passed \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27/1172639598/california-emission-rules-trains-pollution\">first-in-the-nation regulations on diesel trains\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s powerful air regulators have been California’s spearpoint in the fight against climate change in recent years, as they’ve charted an ambitious path to siphon down the state’s use of planet-warming fossil fuels over the next two decades, including banning the sale of new gasoline cars after 2035 and forcing the electrification of most of the state’s transportation sector, the largest contributor of carbon emissions in California.[aside postID=science_1982474 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS64748_GettyImages-94155923-qut-1020x680.jpg']Gideon Kracov, a board member and environmental lawyer from Los Angeles, framed the clean-fleet policy as an ambitious capstone for an agency that has passed no shortage of first-in-the-nation climate rules, calling it the “end of the beginning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Board Chair Liane Randolph said in a statement that California has the technology to build a zero-emission future now and called the new regulations a “reasonable” and “innovative” approach to “clean up the vehicles on our roads and ensure that Californians have the clean air that they want and deserve.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While these 1.8 million trucks represent a tiny fraction of vehicles on the road at just 6%, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/ca-clean-trucks-report.pdf\">they are responsible for more than a quarter of the transportation sector’s greenhouse gas pollution (PDF)\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/advanced-clean-fleets\">The state’s new regulations are meant to accelerate the use of zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty trucks\u003c/a> in California within the next two decades and will require the electrification by 2035 of highly polluting drayage trucks, which transport shipping containers from ports and rail yards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Board member Tania Pacheco-Werner, who is co-director of a health policy institute at Fresno State, framed the policy as an issue of environmental justice.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Tania Pacheco-Werner, California Air Resources Board member\"]‘Even the air is unequal … Wealthier communities have more resources, green space and built environment to protect them from the harmful impacts of dirty trucks.’[/pullquote]“Even the air is unequal,” she said. “Wealthier communities have more resources, green space and built environment to protect them from the harmful impacts of dirty trucks. Others do not. And we see it in differences in emergency visits and hospitalizations due to respiratory issues for people who live closer to freeways and truck traffic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the policy will improve their lives “first and foremost, and we should all be very proud of that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During board hearings that spanned two days, industry groups and government agencies fiercely pushed back on the policies, arguing they are too onerous and would drive up costs for Californians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chris Shimoda, senior vice president of government affairs for the California Trucking Association, told KQED that the state doesn’t have enough charging infrastructure for electric trucks, particularly public charging stations, adding that “nearly 100% of our membership says [the rules] cannot be accomplished.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jim Verburg of the Western States Petroleum Association \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/04/california-phases-out-diesel-trucks/\">told the board\u003c/a> that if businesses couldn’t comply it would “compromise the delivery of essential goods and services to Californians or compromise the state’s economy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 632,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 13
},
"modified": 1704846028,
"excerpt": "The ambitious plan would phase out the state's diesel truck fleets, from semi-trucks to delivery vans and garbage trucks.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "The ambitious plan would phase out the state's diesel truck fleets, from semi-trucks to delivery vans and garbage trucks.",
"title": "California's Air Board Votes to Scale Down Fleets of Diesel Trucks | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "California's Air Board Votes to Scale Down Fleets of Diesel Trucks",
"datePublished": "2023-04-28T14:15:11-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-09T16:20:28-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "californias-air-board-votes-to-scale-down-fleets-of-diesel-trucks",
"status": "publish",
"excludeFromSiteSearch": "Include",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Climate Change",
"articleAge": "0",
"path": "/science/1982494/californias-air-board-votes-to-scale-down-fleets-of-diesel-trucks",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The California Air Resources Board approved an ambitious plan today to phase out its diesel truck fleets, from semi-trucks to delivery vans and garbage trucks, despite the opposition of industry groups who said the plan would be near impossible for them to enact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is the air board’s latest regulation geared at cleaning up toxic air quality and fighting climate change, and comes a day after the same body passed \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27/1172639598/california-emission-rules-trains-pollution\">first-in-the-nation regulations on diesel trains\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s powerful air regulators have been California’s spearpoint in the fight against climate change in recent years, as they’ve charted an ambitious path to siphon down the state’s use of planet-warming fossil fuels over the next two decades, including banning the sale of new gasoline cars after 2035 and forcing the electrification of most of the state’s transportation sector, the largest contributor of carbon emissions in California.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"postid": "science_1982474",
"hero": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/RS64748_GettyImages-94155923-qut-1020x680.jpg",
"label": ""
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Gideon Kracov, a board member and environmental lawyer from Los Angeles, framed the clean-fleet policy as an ambitious capstone for an agency that has passed no shortage of first-in-the-nation climate rules, calling it the “end of the beginning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Board Chair Liane Randolph said in a statement that California has the technology to build a zero-emission future now and called the new regulations a “reasonable” and “innovative” approach to “clean up the vehicles on our roads and ensure that Californians have the clean air that they want and deserve.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While these 1.8 million trucks represent a tiny fraction of vehicles on the road at just 6%, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/ca-clean-trucks-report.pdf\">they are responsible for more than a quarter of the transportation sector’s greenhouse gas pollution (PDF)\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/advanced-clean-fleets\">The state’s new regulations are meant to accelerate the use of zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty trucks\u003c/a> in California within the next two decades and will require the electrification by 2035 of highly polluting drayage trucks, which transport shipping containers from ports and rail yards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Board member Tania Pacheco-Werner, who is co-director of a health policy institute at Fresno State, framed the policy as an issue of environmental justice.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "‘Even the air is unequal … Wealthier communities have more resources, green space and built environment to protect them from the harmful impacts of dirty trucks.’",
"name": "pullquote",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"align": "right",
"size": "medium",
"citation": "Tania Pacheco-Werner, California Air Resources Board member",
"label": ""
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Even the air is unequal,” she said. “Wealthier communities have more resources, green space and built environment to protect them from the harmful impacts of dirty trucks. Others do not. And we see it in differences in emergency visits and hospitalizations due to respiratory issues for people who live closer to freeways and truck traffic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the policy will improve their lives “first and foremost, and we should all be very proud of that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During board hearings that spanned two days, industry groups and government agencies fiercely pushed back on the policies, arguing they are too onerous and would drive up costs for Californians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chris Shimoda, senior vice president of government affairs for the California Trucking Association, told KQED that the state doesn’t have enough charging infrastructure for electric trucks, particularly public charging stations, adding that “nearly 100% of our membership says [the rules] cannot be accomplished.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jim Verburg of the Western States Petroleum Association \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/04/california-phases-out-diesel-trucks/\">told the board\u003c/a> that if businesses couldn’t comply it would “compromise the delivery of essential goods and services to Californians or compromise the state’s economy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/science/1982494/californias-air-board-votes-to-scale-down-fleets-of-diesel-trucks",
"authors": [
"11608"
],
"categories": [
"science_31",
"science_33",
"science_39",
"science_40",
"science_4450"
],
"tags": [
"science_524",
"science_4093",
"science_1627",
"science_194"
],
"featImg": "science_1982500",
"label": "source_science_1982494"
},
"science_1982309": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "science_1982309",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982309",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1681945230000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1681945230,
"format": "standard",
"title": "San Mateo County’s New Sea Level Rise Plan Calls for a 100-Foot Buffer Zone for Shoreline Development",
"headTitle": "San Mateo County’s New Sea Level Rise Plan Calls for a 100-Foot Buffer Zone for Shoreline Development | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>San Mateo County released first-of-its-kind\u003ca href=\"https://oneshoreline.org/planning-guidance/\"> sea level rise guidance\u003c/a> today, a forceful planning document meant to slow a bonanza of shoreline development and protect a dozen communities from climate-driven flooding near San Francisco Bay, including from rising groundwater and catastrophic flooding during storms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/OneShoreline-Planning-Guidance-Policy-Draft_04.18.23_PRINT-VERSION-1.pdf\">voluntary guidance (PDF)\u003c/a> asks that any new development along the county’s 53 miles of bayshore be constructed above today’s high tide by around 10 feet in an effort to protect businesses and residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan would also establish a 100-foot buffer zone between future developments and the bay and set new buildings 35 feet back from creeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='left' citation=\"Len Materman, CEO, OneShoreline\"]‘I’d love to be proven wrong and for somebody to say that OneShoreline protected us too much. Let’s provide too much protection rather than under-protecting people.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not familiar with any [other guidance] that’s this specific and this aggressive on climate flooding,” said Len Materman, CEO of \u003ca href=\"https://oneshoreline.org/\">OneShoreline\u003c/a>, San Mateo County’s flood and sea level rise resiliency district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The protection standards attempt to safeguard future developments from a far wetter future because of the effects of climate change brought on by humans burning fossil fuels globally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new guidance could affect developments between Highway 101 and the shoreline in Brisbane, Burlingame, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Redwood City and South San Francisco, which are currently in planning. This is an opportunity for developers to adapt their plans for the changing climate, said Materman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These developments that are coming in now or in the next few years are going to lock in what our shoreline looks like,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.bcdc.ca.gov/cm/2023/04-06-Briefing-Funding-and-Investment-Framework-presentation.pdf\">Bay Area will need to spend $110 billion dollars to adapt to rising tides (PDF)\u003c/a>, according to a new economic study from the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agencies estimate the revenue currently available to pay for these adaptation projects at just $5 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>San Mateo plans steps out ahead of California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>San Mateo County’s climate scenario goes beyond state recommendations and what most bay agencies are adapting for. Materman said the county should overprepare for climate change, as it’s one of the most at risk in the state from rising tides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d love to be proven wrong and for somebody to say that OneShoreline protected us too much,” he said. “Let’s provide too much protection rather than under-protecting people when we really see the impacts of climate change today.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The guidance also outlines planning tips for dealing with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1979645/see-a-map-of-hazardous-sites-at-risk-from-rising-seas\">contaminated sites near the edge of the bay\u003c/a>, liquefaction risk from earthquakes and underground structures like sewers. It recommends that planners consider future storms — \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212094722000275\">expected to become 37% wetter by the end of the century\u003c/a>, according to Bay Area climate scientists — by making sure that stormwater infrastructure can handle more significant flows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The recommendations come with \u003ca href=\"https://oneshoreline.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/sidebar/index.html?appid=ed2a5cb599ca4651bc6a0c3530271905&locale=en\">risk maps\u003c/a> of sea and groundwater rise due to climate change for planners to understand how the two water sources may inundate communities and businesses near the lip of the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982326\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1982326\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/ONESHORELINE-SCREENGRAB-1020x712.jpg\" alt=\"A green map of the southern Bay Area, with a large section of San Mateo's coastline in yellow. \" width=\"640\" height=\"447\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/ONESHORELINE-SCREENGRAB-1020x712.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/ONESHORELINE-SCREENGRAB-800x558.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/ONESHORELINE-SCREENGRAB-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/ONESHORELINE-SCREENGRAB-768x536.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/ONESHORELINE-SCREENGRAB.jpg 1142w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A screen grab of the county’s sea level rise risk maps.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Materman said anyone who lives or commutes within San Mateo County should care about the risks from climate flooding because a large portion of the infrastructure that supports its bustling cities is along the waterfront.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Let’s use the knowledge that we have about climate change and the bay to make better decisions, and so we don’t lock in these very expensive, difficult problems when we can try to do something about it preemptively,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 640,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 18
},
"modified": 1704846047,
"excerpt": "The new planning document is 'voluntary but highly encouraged' for the 12 cities in San Mateo County that border the bay.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "The new planning document is 'voluntary but highly encouraged' for the 12 cities in San Mateo County that border the bay.",
"title": "San Mateo County’s New Sea Level Rise Plan Calls for a 100-Foot Buffer Zone for Shoreline Development | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "San Mateo County’s New Sea Level Rise Plan Calls for a 100-Foot Buffer Zone for Shoreline Development",
"datePublished": "2023-04-19T16:00:30-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-09T16:20:47-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "san-mateo-countys-new-sea-level-rise-plan-calls-for-a-100-foot-buffer-zone-for-shoreline-development",
"status": "publish",
"excludeFromSiteSearch": "Include",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Sea Level Rise ",
"articleAge": "0",
"path": "/science/1982309/san-mateo-countys-new-sea-level-rise-plan-calls-for-a-100-foot-buffer-zone-for-shoreline-development",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>San Mateo County released first-of-its-kind\u003ca href=\"https://oneshoreline.org/planning-guidance/\"> sea level rise guidance\u003c/a> today, a forceful planning document meant to slow a bonanza of shoreline development and protect a dozen communities from climate-driven flooding near San Francisco Bay, including from rising groundwater and catastrophic flooding during storms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/OneShoreline-Planning-Guidance-Policy-Draft_04.18.23_PRINT-VERSION-1.pdf\">voluntary guidance (PDF)\u003c/a> asks that any new development along the county’s 53 miles of bayshore be constructed above today’s high tide by around 10 feet in an effort to protect businesses and residents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plan would also establish a 100-foot buffer zone between future developments and the bay and set new buildings 35 feet back from creeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "‘I’d love to be proven wrong and for somebody to say that OneShoreline protected us too much. Let’s provide too much protection rather than under-protecting people.’",
"name": "pullquote",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"size": "medium",
"align": "left",
"citation": "Len Materman, CEO, OneShoreline",
"label": ""
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not familiar with any [other guidance] that’s this specific and this aggressive on climate flooding,” said Len Materman, CEO of \u003ca href=\"https://oneshoreline.org/\">OneShoreline\u003c/a>, San Mateo County’s flood and sea level rise resiliency district.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The protection standards attempt to safeguard future developments from a far wetter future because of the effects of climate change brought on by humans burning fossil fuels globally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new guidance could affect developments between Highway 101 and the shoreline in Brisbane, Burlingame, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Redwood City and South San Francisco, which are currently in planning. This is an opportunity for developers to adapt their plans for the changing climate, said Materman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These developments that are coming in now or in the next few years are going to lock in what our shoreline looks like,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.bcdc.ca.gov/cm/2023/04-06-Briefing-Funding-and-Investment-Framework-presentation.pdf\">Bay Area will need to spend $110 billion dollars to adapt to rising tides (PDF)\u003c/a>, according to a new economic study from the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agencies estimate the revenue currently available to pay for these adaptation projects at just $5 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>San Mateo plans steps out ahead of California\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>San Mateo County’s climate scenario goes beyond state recommendations and what most bay agencies are adapting for. Materman said the county should overprepare for climate change, as it’s one of the most at risk in the state from rising tides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d love to be proven wrong and for somebody to say that OneShoreline protected us too much,” he said. “Let’s provide too much protection rather than under-protecting people when we really see the impacts of climate change today.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The guidance also outlines planning tips for dealing with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1979645/see-a-map-of-hazardous-sites-at-risk-from-rising-seas\">contaminated sites near the edge of the bay\u003c/a>, liquefaction risk from earthquakes and underground structures like sewers. It recommends that planners consider future storms — \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212094722000275\">expected to become 37% wetter by the end of the century\u003c/a>, according to Bay Area climate scientists — by making sure that stormwater infrastructure can handle more significant flows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The recommendations come with \u003ca href=\"https://oneshoreline.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/sidebar/index.html?appid=ed2a5cb599ca4651bc6a0c3530271905&locale=en\">risk maps\u003c/a> of sea and groundwater rise due to climate change for planners to understand how the two water sources may inundate communities and businesses near the lip of the bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982326\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1982326\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/ONESHORELINE-SCREENGRAB-1020x712.jpg\" alt=\"A green map of the southern Bay Area, with a large section of San Mateo's coastline in yellow. \" width=\"640\" height=\"447\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/ONESHORELINE-SCREENGRAB-1020x712.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/ONESHORELINE-SCREENGRAB-800x558.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/ONESHORELINE-SCREENGRAB-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/ONESHORELINE-SCREENGRAB-768x536.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/ONESHORELINE-SCREENGRAB.jpg 1142w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A screen grab of the county’s sea level rise risk maps.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Materman said anyone who lives or commutes within San Mateo County should care about the risks from climate flooding because a large portion of the infrastructure that supports its bustling cities is along the waterfront.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Let’s use the knowledge that we have about climate change and the bay to make better decisions, and so we don’t lock in these very expensive, difficult problems when we can try to do something about it preemptively,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/science/1982309/san-mateo-countys-new-sea-level-rise-plan-calls-for-a-100-foot-buffer-zone-for-shoreline-development",
"authors": [
"11746"
],
"categories": [
"science_31",
"science_35",
"science_40",
"science_4450"
],
"tags": [
"science_194",
"science_4414",
"science_2114",
"science_4859",
"science_206"
],
"featImg": "science_1982310",
"label": "source_science_1982309"
},
"science_1982130": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "science_1982130",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982130",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1680699603000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1680699603,
"format": "standard",
"title": "Promising to Prevent Floods at Treasure Island, Builders Downplay Risk of Sea Rise",
"headTitle": "Promising to Prevent Floods at Treasure Island, Builders Downplay Risk of Sea Rise | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported by the \u003ca href=\"https://sfpublicpress.org/\">San Francisco Public Press\u003c/a>, an independent nonprofit newsroom focused on accountability journalism, in partnership with Inside Climate News.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sea level rise is forcing cities around San Francisco Bay to weigh demand for new housing against the need to protect communities from flooding. Builders say they can solve this dilemma with cutting-edge civil engineering. But no one knows whether their ambitious efforts will be enough to keep newly built waterfront real estate safe in coming decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, developers are busy building — and telling the public that they can mitigate this one effect of climate change, despite mounting evidence that it could be a bigger problem than previously believed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Treasure Island, a flat tract of 20th-century landfill with epic bay vistas, workers have poured the foundation for a 22-story tower, the first of six planned high-rise buildings, and broken ground on an affordable housing complex. Another, for families and unhoused veterans, is nearly complete. Townhomes, retail space and a waterfront transit hub are also in the pipeline. All told, the $6 billion development would be home to 20,000 people or more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Engineers for the public-private consortium transforming the island, Treasure Island Community Development, say they are pursuing aggressive sea rise adaptation strategies. Improvements include raising some of the land by several feet, preparing a buffer zone for future levees and pumps, and setting aside low-lying open space that could convert to floodable marshland as higher bay waters spill onshore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is not a cheap endeavor. The development group’s director, Bob Beck, did not return multiple emails and phone calls regarding costs for this work. A 2011 report by the city of San Francisco, which includes Treasure Island, estimated that “geotechnical stabilization” measures would cost $137 million. Storm drains, soil grading and landscape and open-space improvements would add about $120 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dilip Trivedi, the site’s project manager with international engineering firm Moffatt and Nichol, has been touting the consortium’s efforts for more than a decade. He said in a recent interview that the most built-up parts of the island should be safe from sea rise through at least 2070. Fifty years or so is a reasonable planning horizon for new developments, he added, and additional phased seawall construction can help future generations stay a step ahead of ever-higher tides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you put together significant infrastructure, you don’t want to have to maintain it for about that time,” Trivedi said. “It is what we call project life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982132\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982132\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_03-1536x1025-1-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"Two construction workers seen on the job on residential tower. \" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_03-1536x1025-1-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_03-1536x1025-1-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_03-1536x1025-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_03-1536x1025-1-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_03-1536x1025-1.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">After years of planning, construction has started on residential towers with sweeping views of San Francisco and the Bay Area. At least 20,000 residents are expected to live on the island by 2035. \u003ccite>(Yesica Prado/San Francisco Public Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Climate scientists, however, commonly try to predict sea rise out at least to the year 2100, a time when some current schoolchildren could be octogenarian residents of the island.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every contemporary climate model predicts that, even with deep carbon reductions starting this decade, several feet of sea rise are locked in. The debates for climate adaptation strategy are how many feet and how far down the road we should consider.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With ever more sophisticated climate predictions, the outlook for sea level rise has continued to darken, indicating that current trends will likely accelerate through the end of the century. In one pessimistic scenario — which researchers say is among the possibilities in a “business as usual” global greenhouse gas emissions future — much of the island could find itself underwater frequently, and some of the most developed areas could occasionally be threatened with flooding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To home in on Treasure Island’s future, the San Francisco Public Press asked researchers at the United States Geological Survey’s Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, based in Santa Cruz, to create a highly localized model of sea rise conditions under various climate scenarios. They found that bay waters could surge higher than the developers have long been saying publicly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In that model, by 2100 there is a small but not insignificant chance of 4 feet, 11 inches of sea level rise — slightly more than what the island’s engineers have accounted for. Adding in the effects of tides, weather and other transient events, such as in the kind of extreme storm seen once in a century, that total could be 2 feet, 11 inches higher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The resulting surge would, at least temporarily, send waves 1 foot, 2 inches higher than the lowest ground floors of some planned housing complexes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1982133\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/SeaLevelRiseSchematic700px.png\" alt=\"Facing Sea Level Rise at Treasure Island\" width=\"700\" height=\"691\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/SeaLevelRiseSchematic700px.png 700w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/SeaLevelRiseSchematic700px-160x158.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the project’s engineers never address this possibility in their public narratives, documents they have prepared show they have known about similar scenarios for years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their own maps, which superimpose flood conditions on existing land elevations, line up fairly closely to the Geological Survey’s findings. Yet the engineers have chosen to downplay the likelihood of these outcomes as they pursued permits to build, arguing that novel construction technologies could make the development invulnerable to flooding under any reasonable course of events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a 2016 sea rise adaptation filing with a regional watershed agency, Moffatt and Nichol included six maps showing potential flood conditions in each construction phase, side by side with maps showing how the planned short- and long-term sea level rise protections would prevent inundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One map shows 4 feet of sea rise. Before any land improvements, nearly the entire island would have been inundated — up to 8 feet in places — during flooding calculated by FEMA to have a 1% chance of occurring per year. Another part of that document showed a graph that indicated a 4-foot rise was possible by around 2093. The Geological Survey’s extreme scenario model for 2100 puts sea rise closer to 5 feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Trivedi said that the raising of the land under many of the buildings, plus additional shoreline improvements, would protect key infrastructure. Beside that map, the engineers showed how the existing 3.5-mile perimeter wall could be raised by 1 to 3 feet, depending on location, which they said would keep much of the island dry, although a note appended to the diagram said: “Does not show intentional flooding from managed retreat on northern and eastern shorelines — TBD.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within the last year, regulators have started questioning whether the steps developers are taking are sufficient to guarantee that the island remains dry in the long term.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a community that will be around a while,” said Ethan Lavine, chief of permits for shoreline development for the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. “At a certain point in time, they will need levee protection.” Lavine’s office is pressing Trivedi and his colleagues to use a more cautious view of climate change when assessing whether Treasure Island’s flood prevention techniques can handle what nature might throw at them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When evaluating permit applications, government agencies require developers to reference the “best available science” to assess threats from climate change. In October 2021, the engineers issued an update to the 2016 filing. In it, Trivedi compared his firm’s sea level rise expectations against studies by several scientific bodies, including California’s Ocean Protection Council and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. His preferred predictions minimized the effect of the worst-case scenarios. The only needed change, he argued, would be to move up the time frame for planning adaptations by as much as five years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1982134\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/TreasureIslandSFCA750px.png\" alt=\"Fortifying Treasure Island\" width=\"750\" height=\"864\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/TreasureIslandSFCA750px.png 750w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/TreasureIslandSFCA750px-160x184.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet climate policy experts point out that with significant scientific papers being released each year, guidance for builders has become a moving target. Because they admit a great deal of uncertainty in their predictions, scientists always publish their results in charts that consider an array of environmental assumptions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That gives developers leeway to choose which predictions to focus on when describing the risks to their capital investments. Treasure Island could be the most expensive local project in the region’s history to take advantage of this ambiguity.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Projecting optimism\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>All of Trivedi’s recent public statements conclude that the likelihood of the gloomiest climate scenarios is remote, and that the level of risk to property and lives is insignificant given the proposed engineering fixes. But a close examination of the 2021 adaptation plan offers a few reasons for concern:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>It dismisses high-end forecasts, in which global warming accelerates due to uncontrolled carbon emissions.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>It selectively cites climate models that make planned infrastructure appear sufficient to virtually eliminate future flood risk.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>It focuses on relatively short time frames, such as 20 or 50 years, while offering little specificity about expected conditions at the end of the century, which falls within the lifetimes of some children alive today.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Trivedi said in an interview that for planning purposes, he is focused on one recent predicted milestone: 3 feet of sea rise by 2080. In that circumstance, the ground floors of most buildings, to be built upon a now-elevated development pad, would still have a buffer of nearly 4 feet above the average highest tide of today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also asserted that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific committee organized by the United Nations, recently reported sea rise could be less severe than previously forecasted, based on the track record of recent years. “What has been observed is that sea level rise is not tracking” to the most pessimistic scenarios, he said. But there are reasons to question his conclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The localized scenario for 2100 examined by the Geological Survey — the one resulting in water levels 1 foot, 2 inches above some developed areas — relies on a climate change prediction assessed to have a probability of 0.5%, that is, a 1-in-200 statistical chance of occurring. That prediction was published by the California Ocean Protection Council, a body of experts organized by the state government, in recent guidelines for community planning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trivedi said the international group’s current report indicates there’s “low confidence in that scenario happening.” When asked for a citation to back up this claim, Trivedi referenced a “localized model” of the findings from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and five other federal agencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/sealevelrise/sealevelrise-tech-report.html\">report these agencies jointly issued in February 2022\u003c/a> in fact gave a more nuanced view. In a section titled “Future Mean Sea Level,” the authors did exclude one scenario used by the Ocean Protection Council that had been labeled “extreme” and not given a numerical probability. But that is not the scenario Trivedi said the group ruled out. This same report indicates that the West Coast is likely to see 4 to 8 inches of rise over 30 years, accelerating later in the century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regardless of the pace of the increase, Treasure Island developers say they have contingency plans relying on future residents or taxpayers to fund the construction of progressively higher walls around the urban zone — several feet every few decades. In its latest update, Moffatt and Nichol said sea level rise of 1 foot by 2043 would trigger the plan to elevate the perimeter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A strategy reliant on levees might seem risky in light of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when faulty engineering of levees led to catastrophic flooding of parts of New Orleans that sit below the level of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. In light of this recent history, Bay Area regulators are starting to ask whether the Treasure Island plan is entirely watertight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A March 2022 letter from the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the agency that issued the island’s 2016 permit for waterfront areas, called the update too optimistic and tolerant of long-term flooding potential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Public access along a shoreline and a big mixed-use development require using a medium-to-high-risk projection for sea level rise,” said the commission’s planning manager, Erik Buehmann.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Reengineering shaky ground\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On an island built by the government generations ago out of rocks, soil and dredged sand, preparing high-and-dry land would be difficult even if it were not in an earthquake and tsunami zone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In numerous reports and public presentations, Trivedi has said construction workers have elevated land on the 100-acre development pad to 3 feet, 6 inches above the “base flood elevation” — a height calculated by Federal Emergency Management Agency representing a 1% chance of flooding each year. The homes, hotels and businesses there will be set back from the shoreline by 200 to 300 feet on most sides and as much as 1,000 feet from the northern shore because that area is more prone to flooding. Building is planned to roll out in phases through 2035.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Workers have spent years using cranes to repeatedly drop heavy weights to compact the soil. They have driven vibrating probes into the earth, filling the holes with concrete for stabilization. They then piled 1 million cubic yards of soil atop the compacted layer. These measures are intended to prevent the kind of ground liquefaction seen in the Marina District and elsewhere during the devastating 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Other geological improvements include inserting vertical wick drains, akin to long drinking straws, to help remove water from the soil as it compresses. These techniques have been used by civil engineers around the world for more than 30 years to develop areas without easy access to bedrock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982135\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982135\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_07-1536x1024-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A view of compacted yards of soil.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_07-1536x1024-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_07-1536x1024-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_07-1536x1024-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_07-1536x1024-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_07-1536x1024-1.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Developers have trucked in and compacted 1 million cubic yards of soil to raise the land underneath new buildings in one strategy to mitigate flood risk. \u003ccite>(Yesica Prado/San Francisco Public Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Trivedi said these measures, together with a jagged, rocky seawall raised to allow for just over 1 foot of sea rise, would help take energy out of large waves, and the setback would use the landscape to dissipate any possible overtopping before it reaches valuable structures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, the engineers have recognized that much of the island — particularly the low-lying northern end — are indefensible. Areas that have flooded in the past will eventually be sacrificed to rising waters. That strategy has immediate, concrete consequences: Dozens of existing structures, including homes of about 3,000 people currently living there, are set to be demolished to create open space. Over time these areas could be turned into tidal marshland to protect the newly developed areas from storms.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Regulators balk at a sunny assessment\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the agency most empowered to weigh in on new waterfront building, is hamstrung by a legal mandate to regulate only what happens 100 feet inland, regardless of elevation — an artifact of legislation dating from before climate change was a dominant concern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2016 permit the agency issued for improvements on Treasure Island’s margins, including a ferry terminal, required adaptation updates every five years. Moffatt and Nichol’s 2021 update concluded that the original adaptation plans needed few changes, except for possibly needing to accelerate, by five years, the planning process for building higher perimeter levees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators balked at the assessment. In a March 2022 letter, the commission advised Moffatt and Nichol to plan more conservatively. The agency demanded consideration of a 1-in-200 chance sea rise scenario, in which seas rise 6 feet, 11 inches by 2100. Adding in a 100-year storm surge, waves could plausibly overtop portions of the sea wall along the southeastern side by about 1 to 2 feet, and along the northern end by about 1 foot. That is an even worse outcome than that predicted by Geological Survey’s localized flooding model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The commission said Moffatt and Nichol seemed too dismissive of chances that things could go wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The permittees decided to design the project considering very low risk of sea level rise related impacts” the letter said, noting also that engineers seemed too focused on the short time horizon of 2080.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trivedi counters that the Treasure Island development was never built upon projections of a certain sea level happening by a certain date, because seawalls can, for all practical purposes, be built arbitrarily high, on whatever schedule is needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We adopted an approach where we decided on an allowance we are building into the project,” he said in the interview. “As future projections come out, we will adjust the date of the adaptation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Commission staff met with planners from Moffatt and Nichol last summer to work out the requested additions to the 2021 adaptation strategy. Buehmann, who worked on the original permit, said follow-up discussions were to be expected because the Treasure Island permit was the first since the commission began requiring builders to submit sea rise assessments. “We didn’t expect it to be perfect the first time,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whatever comes of this process which Trivedi referred to as merely “an internal thing” that was required for the filing — the adaptation plan is unlikely to change significantly, because the development pad is already in place and huge construction cranes are sprouting up on Treasure Island’s skyline. What is left in the playbook is raising future seawalls, ceding the northern open space and the installation of pumps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Government officials have long acknowledged the inevitability of Treasure Island’s relying on artificial barriers. In 2015, Brad McCrea, regulatory program director at the commission, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfpublicpress.org/major-s-f-bayfront-developments-advance-despite-sea-rise-warnings/\">told the Public Press\u003c/a>: “At the end of the day, this will be a levee-protected community — there’s no getting around that.” Since then, agency staff have not changed their view.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Rapidly outdated climate science\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>To determine how high to raise the building pad, Treasure Island builders consulted several climate studies published as early as 1987 and as recently as 2007. At that point, scientists were predicting that by 2100, oceans could rise as much as 4 feet, 7 inches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This forecast was echoed by a state panel of scientists and policy experts in 2009, when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger visited Treasure Island to announce its findings and call for better sea level rise mitigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982136\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982136\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_09-1536x1024-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A view of the San Francisco skyline from Treasure Island.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_09-1536x1024-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_09-1536x1024-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_09-1536x1024-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_09-1536x1024-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_09-1536x1024-1.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">When finished, Treasure Island could be a spectacular locale for commuters to San Francisco to settle. But residents will face similar flooding challenges to those in waterfront communities throughout the Bay Area. \u003ccite>(Yesica Prado/San Francisco Public Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Moffatt and Nichol then relied on these studies to anticipate that the oceans would rise 3 feet by 2075. So the company proposed raising the development pad to 3 feet, 6 inches above the predicted levels for a once-in-a-hundred-year flood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moffatt and Nichol did not spell out a rationale for setting the height of the development pad, as the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfpublicpress.org/uncertain-about-rising-seas-developers-using-mid-range-estimate-to-build-up-island/\">Public Press reported in 2010\u003c/a>. The firm did argue that raising it higher could create other problems, such as jeopardizing the island’s stability under the weight of packed soil and adding expense. “At some point it doesn’t become cost-effective — it’s a matter of acceptable levels of risk over your planning horizon,” Trivedi said in an interview then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be sure, when Treasure Island plans were drawn up, scientific modeling showed wide uncertainty about how much global temperatures could increase. In 2009, scientists around the world were saying that oceans could rise anywhere from a minimum of 3 feet, 3 inches to a maximum of 4 feet, 11 inches by 2100. At that time, the effects of ice melt from land via glaciers, snowpacks and ice caps were little understood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, European and U.S. scientists using satellite imagery to measure the shape of Greenland’s ice sheets say melting is outstripping gains from snowfall. In \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01441-2\">a paper published last August\u003c/a>, they found that no matter how much countries curb emissions, seas will rise by a minimum of 11 inches from this effect alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Focusing locally\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Geological Survey developed the \u003ca href=\"https://ourcoastourfuture.org/science-and-modeling/\">Coastal Storm Modeling System\u003c/a> to help protect waterfront communities. It simulates \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-40742-z#MOESM1\">the forces behind wave and wind data and translates them into local flood projections\u003c/a> that include tides, storm surges, waves and seasonal events such as El Niño.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Public Press requested that the agency simulate a small section of San Francisco Bay, in the vicinity of Treasure Island, relying on probability scenarios for global sea levels in 2100 developed by the \u003ca href=\"https://www.opc.ca.gov/opc-climate-change-program/sea-level-rise-2/\">California Ocean Protection Council\u003c/a> in \u003ca href=\"https://www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/agenda_items/20180314/Item3_Exhibit-A_OPC_SLR_Guidance-rd3.pdf\">a 2018 guidance paper (PDF)\u003c/a>. This report offered up sea rise projections of likelihoods as high as 50% and as low as 0.5%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Ocean Protection Council’s examination of a wide array of probabilities heavily influenced the Bay Conservation and Development Commission’s critique of the Treasure Island adaptation update. The commission’s biggest concern was that change might happen faster than the engineers were anticipating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" allow=\"fullscreen 'none'\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"https://coastal.climatecentral.org/embed/map/13/-122.3736/37.8082/?theme=water_level&map_type=water_level_above_mhhw&basemap=roadmap&contiguous=true&elevation_model=best_available&water_level=7.8&water_unit=ft\" width=\"100%\" height=\"450\" title=\"Climate Central | Land below 7.8 feet of water\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Explore sea level rise scenarios using \u003ca href=\"https://climatecentral.org/\">Climate Central\u003c/a>’s interactive tool. Here we show floodwaters at 7.8 feet above the present-day high tide line.\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Trivedi said the Ocean Protection Council’s past predictions had already failed. “If you look at the year 2022 projections, follow the OPC formulas,” Trivedi said. “We should have seen about 8 inches of sea level rise since 2000. In reality, it has been about 2 inches or less.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most forecasts predict increased global temperatures due to persistent carbon pollution. But the emissions projections are still hotly contested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Ocean Protection Council examined two emissions scenarios. \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200804085912.htm\">One assumed that\u003c/a> carbon dioxide output doubles through 2050. The other imagined more aggressive greenhouse gas reductions — 70% by 2050 and “net zero” emissions by 2080.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the purposes of seeing how bad things could plausibly get, the U.S. Geological Survey used a midlevel emissions scenario. This decision was based on detailed simulations into the next century of swell and waves along the Pacific Ocean. What the researchers found was that paradoxically, milder greenhouse gas levels generated worse storms for California’s coast than do extreme ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s really changed in the research community is that worst-case scenarios have become more common,” said Patrick Barnard, a research geologist with the agency. “The state is asking communities to prepare for these.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This approach helps waterfront areas learn to be more risk-averse to protect property and lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Avoiding mistakes of the past\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Foster City is paying a high price for waterfront sprawl. Like Treasure Island, the mid-Peninsula community 25 miles to the south was built entirely on landfill, not unusual in the Bay Area, where efforts to accommodate population growth stretching back to the Gold Rush consumed most of the wetlands and tidal marshes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Foster City did have worries about flooding decades ago. It is shot through with artificial waterways, including two sloughs, several small canals and an artificial lagoon. Barely above sea level before being developed, it would not exist if not for its levees and seawalls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet, in 2014 FEMA informed Foster City officials that \u003ca href=\"https://fostercitylevee.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/coastal_flood_hazard_study.pdf\">new studies showed (PDF)\u003c/a> the levee system was neither strong nor tall enough to withstand a major storm and the large waves that would result. Update the seawalls and levees, or the entire city would be designated a floodplain, the agency said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sixty years ago, developers there hauled in tons of sand to raise the land several feet to construct thousands of homes in what became a 33,000-resident community. That was a time when climate change was not a part of city planning vernacular. Today workers are busy widening and raising levees and adding interlocking steel plates as a bulwark against the storms federal regulators warned of, as well as rising seas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Treasure Island, which is slated to add 8,000 units of housing to accommodate more than 20,000 residents, is still more than a decade away from build-out. What the engineers put in place there in the next few years could avoid Foster City’s mistakes — or compound them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be sure, some cities are starting to alter blueprints on pace with the evolving science. In October, the Port of San Francisco announced it was collaborating with the Army Corps of Engineers \u003ca href=\"https://sfport.com/files/2022-10/10112022_item_11a_draft_waterfront_adaptation_strategies_final.pdf\">to study how to shore up the city’s seawall along its eastern waterfront (PDF)\u003c/a>, from Fisherman’s Wharf to the Hunters Point Shipyard, to combat both sea rise and earthquake risk. This area includes attractions like the Chase Center sports arena, a project green-lighted before a city-commissioned study surfaced that predicted flooding from sea level rise in the new Mission Bay neighborhood, as \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfpublicpress.org/projects-sailed-through-despite-dire-flood-study/\">the Public Press reported in 2017\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Port officials now say they anticipate 7 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century. That is 2 feet, 5 inches higher than the level Treasure Island’s developers are planning for in their adaptation strategy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Port’s yearlong effort will consider elevating barriers along the Embarcadero, installing a system of locks at Mission Creek and buying back and cleaning up privately owned landfill areas around Islais Creek to return them to the tidal zone.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Not easy to abandon a home\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the grips of a housing affordability crisis, San Francisco needs new construction. But is a flood zone the wisest place to build? That could depend on how long we expect buildings to last.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barnard, of the U.S. Geological Survey, has traveled to many communities, including Okracoke Island, part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, to assess how to protect people from storms. In September 2019, Hurricane Dorian shut the island down to visitors. For residents, it was hard to consider leaving a place they have inhabited for seven or eight generations. “You can’t detach people from their place, or their heart,” Barnard said. “They’ll stay until water is up to their nose.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the developers moved in, Treasure Island had \u003ca href=\"https://censusreporter.org/profiles/15000US060750179031-bg-1-tract-17903-san-francisco-ca/\">roughly 3,000 residents, according to the 2020 Census\u003c/a>, many living in homes built for the U.S. Navy in the mid-20th century when it was a military base. Nearly half have a household income less than $50,000, and many do not speak English.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now these residents are on tenterhooks. Under an agreement with the developer, people who lived on Treasure Island before 2011 are guaranteed new affordable and rent-controlled units. But the wait times and other inconveniences have been tough. Everyone is living in a construction site with an unreliable electrical grid that browns and blacks out frequently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982137\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982137\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_12-1536x1024-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Two people run in a residential area with their dog.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_12-1536x1024-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_12-1536x1024-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_12-1536x1024-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_12-1536x1024-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_12-1536x1024-1.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Most of the existing low-lying homes on the island, built decades ago, will be razed to make room for new condos, as well as open space that developers say could be abandoned to bay waters as seas rise. \u003ccite>(Yesica Prado/San Francisco Public Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The new units are supposed to be comparable to what they had, but longtime islander Christoph Opperman said they have been offered “interim” units that, for example, might not have enough space for a family, or lack laundry facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re picking us off one neighborhood at a time by making us do two moves,” Opperman said. “We’re not entitled to just anything on the island, but we are entitled to fair treatment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Treasure Island’s planners are essentially acknowledging that they must sacrifice part of the island to the bay, even while pursuing a more built-up urban environment just several hundred feet away. This combination of \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfpublicpress.org/researchers-abandon-neighborhoods-avoid-flood-zone-to-limit-sea-level-rise/\">advance and retreat\u003c/a> is all part of the plan, the engineers say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked whether he would move to Treasure Island, Trivedi did not hesitate to say yes, observing that no part of the Bay Area was completely free of danger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t see why not,” he said. “I mean, should people be moving to San Francisco, because of the seismic risk? Buildings are being designed to codes. And flooding is the same way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This reporting is supported by grants from the\u003ca href=\"https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/topics/business-and-sustainability\"> Solutions Journalism Network’s Business and Sustainability Initiative\u003c/a> and by the \u003ca href=\"http://fij.org/\">Fund for Investigative Journalism\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\">Inside Climate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/newsletter/\">Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": true,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 4767,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [
"https://coastal.climatecentral.org/embed/map/13/-122.3736/37.8082/"
],
"paragraphCount": 89
},
"modified": 1704846057,
"excerpt": "One environmental model predicts that by 2100, stormwater could threaten a neighborhood now under construction. Protecting the community depends on extreme waterfront engineering decades into the future.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "One environmental model predicts that by 2100, stormwater could threaten a neighborhood now under construction. Protecting the community depends on extreme waterfront engineering decades into the future.",
"title": "Promising to Prevent Floods at Treasure Island, Builders Downplay Risk of Sea Rise | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Promising to Prevent Floods at Treasure Island, Builders Downplay Risk of Sea Rise",
"datePublished": "2023-04-05T06:00:03-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-09T16:20:57-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "promising-to-prevent-floods-at-treasure-island-builders-downplay-risk-of-sea-rise",
"status": "publish",
"nprByline": "Kristi Coale\u003cbr>San Francisco Public Press",
"excludeFromSiteSearch": "Include",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Inside Climate News",
"showOnAuthorArchivePages": "No",
"articleAge": "0",
"path": "/science/1982130/promising-to-prevent-floods-at-treasure-island-builders-downplay-risk-of-sea-rise",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was reported by the \u003ca href=\"https://sfpublicpress.org/\">San Francisco Public Press\u003c/a>, an independent nonprofit newsroom focused on accountability journalism, in partnership with Inside Climate News.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sea level rise is forcing cities around San Francisco Bay to weigh demand for new housing against the need to protect communities from flooding. Builders say they can solve this dilemma with cutting-edge civil engineering. But no one knows whether their ambitious efforts will be enough to keep newly built waterfront real estate safe in coming decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, developers are busy building — and telling the public that they can mitigate this one effect of climate change, despite mounting evidence that it could be a bigger problem than previously believed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Treasure Island, a flat tract of 20th-century landfill with epic bay vistas, workers have poured the foundation for a 22-story tower, the first of six planned high-rise buildings, and broken ground on an affordable housing complex. Another, for families and unhoused veterans, is nearly complete. Townhomes, retail space and a waterfront transit hub are also in the pipeline. All told, the $6 billion development would be home to 20,000 people or more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Engineers for the public-private consortium transforming the island, Treasure Island Community Development, say they are pursuing aggressive sea rise adaptation strategies. Improvements include raising some of the land by several feet, preparing a buffer zone for future levees and pumps, and setting aside low-lying open space that could convert to floodable marshland as higher bay waters spill onshore.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is not a cheap endeavor. The development group’s director, Bob Beck, did not return multiple emails and phone calls regarding costs for this work. A 2011 report by the city of San Francisco, which includes Treasure Island, estimated that “geotechnical stabilization” measures would cost $137 million. Storm drains, soil grading and landscape and open-space improvements would add about $120 million.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dilip Trivedi, the site’s project manager with international engineering firm Moffatt and Nichol, has been touting the consortium’s efforts for more than a decade. He said in a recent interview that the most built-up parts of the island should be safe from sea rise through at least 2070. Fifty years or so is a reasonable planning horizon for new developments, he added, and additional phased seawall construction can help future generations stay a step ahead of ever-higher tides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you put together significant infrastructure, you don’t want to have to maintain it for about that time,” Trivedi said. “It is what we call project life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982132\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982132\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_03-1536x1025-1-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"Two construction workers seen on the job on residential tower. \" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_03-1536x1025-1-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_03-1536x1025-1-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_03-1536x1025-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_03-1536x1025-1-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_03-1536x1025-1.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">After years of planning, construction has started on residential towers with sweeping views of San Francisco and the Bay Area. At least 20,000 residents are expected to live on the island by 2035. \u003ccite>(Yesica Prado/San Francisco Public Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Climate scientists, however, commonly try to predict sea rise out at least to the year 2100, a time when some current schoolchildren could be octogenarian residents of the island.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every contemporary climate model predicts that, even with deep carbon reductions starting this decade, several feet of sea rise are locked in. The debates for climate adaptation strategy are how many feet and how far down the road we should consider.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With ever more sophisticated climate predictions, the outlook for sea level rise has continued to darken, indicating that current trends will likely accelerate through the end of the century. In one pessimistic scenario — which researchers say is among the possibilities in a “business as usual” global greenhouse gas emissions future — much of the island could find itself underwater frequently, and some of the most developed areas could occasionally be threatened with flooding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To home in on Treasure Island’s future, the San Francisco Public Press asked researchers at the United States Geological Survey’s Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, based in Santa Cruz, to create a highly localized model of sea rise conditions under various climate scenarios. They found that bay waters could surge higher than the developers have long been saying publicly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In that model, by 2100 there is a small but not insignificant chance of 4 feet, 11 inches of sea level rise — slightly more than what the island’s engineers have accounted for. Adding in the effects of tides, weather and other transient events, such as in the kind of extreme storm seen once in a century, that total could be 2 feet, 11 inches higher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The resulting surge would, at least temporarily, send waves 1 foot, 2 inches higher than the lowest ground floors of some planned housing complexes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1982133\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/SeaLevelRiseSchematic700px.png\" alt=\"Facing Sea Level Rise at Treasure Island\" width=\"700\" height=\"691\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/SeaLevelRiseSchematic700px.png 700w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/SeaLevelRiseSchematic700px-160x158.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the project’s engineers never address this possibility in their public narratives, documents they have prepared show they have known about similar scenarios for years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their own maps, which superimpose flood conditions on existing land elevations, line up fairly closely to the Geological Survey’s findings. Yet the engineers have chosen to downplay the likelihood of these outcomes as they pursued permits to build, arguing that novel construction technologies could make the development invulnerable to flooding under any reasonable course of events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a 2016 sea rise adaptation filing with a regional watershed agency, Moffatt and Nichol included six maps showing potential flood conditions in each construction phase, side by side with maps showing how the planned short- and long-term sea level rise protections would prevent inundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One map shows 4 feet of sea rise. Before any land improvements, nearly the entire island would have been inundated — up to 8 feet in places — during flooding calculated by FEMA to have a 1% chance of occurring per year. Another part of that document showed a graph that indicated a 4-foot rise was possible by around 2093. The Geological Survey’s extreme scenario model for 2100 puts sea rise closer to 5 feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Trivedi said that the raising of the land under many of the buildings, plus additional shoreline improvements, would protect key infrastructure. Beside that map, the engineers showed how the existing 3.5-mile perimeter wall could be raised by 1 to 3 feet, depending on location, which they said would keep much of the island dry, although a note appended to the diagram said: “Does not show intentional flooding from managed retreat on northern and eastern shorelines — TBD.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within the last year, regulators have started questioning whether the steps developers are taking are sufficient to guarantee that the island remains dry in the long term.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a community that will be around a while,” said Ethan Lavine, chief of permits for shoreline development for the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. “At a certain point in time, they will need levee protection.” Lavine’s office is pressing Trivedi and his colleagues to use a more cautious view of climate change when assessing whether Treasure Island’s flood prevention techniques can handle what nature might throw at them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When evaluating permit applications, government agencies require developers to reference the “best available science” to assess threats from climate change. In October 2021, the engineers issued an update to the 2016 filing. In it, Trivedi compared his firm’s sea level rise expectations against studies by several scientific bodies, including California’s Ocean Protection Council and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. His preferred predictions minimized the effect of the worst-case scenarios. The only needed change, he argued, would be to move up the time frame for planning adaptations by as much as five years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1982134\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/TreasureIslandSFCA750px.png\" alt=\"Fortifying Treasure Island\" width=\"750\" height=\"864\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/TreasureIslandSFCA750px.png 750w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/TreasureIslandSFCA750px-160x184.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet climate policy experts point out that with significant scientific papers being released each year, guidance for builders has become a moving target. Because they admit a great deal of uncertainty in their predictions, scientists always publish their results in charts that consider an array of environmental assumptions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That gives developers leeway to choose which predictions to focus on when describing the risks to their capital investments. Treasure Island could be the most expensive local project in the region’s history to take advantage of this ambiguity.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Projecting optimism\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>All of Trivedi’s recent public statements conclude that the likelihood of the gloomiest climate scenarios is remote, and that the level of risk to property and lives is insignificant given the proposed engineering fixes. But a close examination of the 2021 adaptation plan offers a few reasons for concern:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>It dismisses high-end forecasts, in which global warming accelerates due to uncontrolled carbon emissions.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>It selectively cites climate models that make planned infrastructure appear sufficient to virtually eliminate future flood risk.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>It focuses on relatively short time frames, such as 20 or 50 years, while offering little specificity about expected conditions at the end of the century, which falls within the lifetimes of some children alive today.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Trivedi said in an interview that for planning purposes, he is focused on one recent predicted milestone: 3 feet of sea rise by 2080. In that circumstance, the ground floors of most buildings, to be built upon a now-elevated development pad, would still have a buffer of nearly 4 feet above the average highest tide of today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also asserted that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific committee organized by the United Nations, recently reported sea rise could be less severe than previously forecasted, based on the track record of recent years. “What has been observed is that sea level rise is not tracking” to the most pessimistic scenarios, he said. But there are reasons to question his conclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The localized scenario for 2100 examined by the Geological Survey — the one resulting in water levels 1 foot, 2 inches above some developed areas — relies on a climate change prediction assessed to have a probability of 0.5%, that is, a 1-in-200 statistical chance of occurring. That prediction was published by the California Ocean Protection Council, a body of experts organized by the state government, in recent guidelines for community planning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trivedi said the international group’s current report indicates there’s “low confidence in that scenario happening.” When asked for a citation to back up this claim, Trivedi referenced a “localized model” of the findings from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and five other federal agencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/sealevelrise/sealevelrise-tech-report.html\">report these agencies jointly issued in February 2022\u003c/a> in fact gave a more nuanced view. In a section titled “Future Mean Sea Level,” the authors did exclude one scenario used by the Ocean Protection Council that had been labeled “extreme” and not given a numerical probability. But that is not the scenario Trivedi said the group ruled out. This same report indicates that the West Coast is likely to see 4 to 8 inches of rise over 30 years, accelerating later in the century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regardless of the pace of the increase, Treasure Island developers say they have contingency plans relying on future residents or taxpayers to fund the construction of progressively higher walls around the urban zone — several feet every few decades. In its latest update, Moffatt and Nichol said sea level rise of 1 foot by 2043 would trigger the plan to elevate the perimeter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A strategy reliant on levees might seem risky in light of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when faulty engineering of levees led to catastrophic flooding of parts of New Orleans that sit below the level of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. In light of this recent history, Bay Area regulators are starting to ask whether the Treasure Island plan is entirely watertight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A March 2022 letter from the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the agency that issued the island’s 2016 permit for waterfront areas, called the update too optimistic and tolerant of long-term flooding potential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Public access along a shoreline and a big mixed-use development require using a medium-to-high-risk projection for sea level rise,” said the commission’s planning manager, Erik Buehmann.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Reengineering shaky ground\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On an island built by the government generations ago out of rocks, soil and dredged sand, preparing high-and-dry land would be difficult even if it were not in an earthquake and tsunami zone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In numerous reports and public presentations, Trivedi has said construction workers have elevated land on the 100-acre development pad to 3 feet, 6 inches above the “base flood elevation” — a height calculated by Federal Emergency Management Agency representing a 1% chance of flooding each year. The homes, hotels and businesses there will be set back from the shoreline by 200 to 300 feet on most sides and as much as 1,000 feet from the northern shore because that area is more prone to flooding. Building is planned to roll out in phases through 2035.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Workers have spent years using cranes to repeatedly drop heavy weights to compact the soil. They have driven vibrating probes into the earth, filling the holes with concrete for stabilization. They then piled 1 million cubic yards of soil atop the compacted layer. These measures are intended to prevent the kind of ground liquefaction seen in the Marina District and elsewhere during the devastating 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Other geological improvements include inserting vertical wick drains, akin to long drinking straws, to help remove water from the soil as it compresses. These techniques have been used by civil engineers around the world for more than 30 years to develop areas without easy access to bedrock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982135\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982135\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_07-1536x1024-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A view of compacted yards of soil.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_07-1536x1024-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_07-1536x1024-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_07-1536x1024-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_07-1536x1024-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_07-1536x1024-1.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Developers have trucked in and compacted 1 million cubic yards of soil to raise the land underneath new buildings in one strategy to mitigate flood risk. \u003ccite>(Yesica Prado/San Francisco Public Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Trivedi said these measures, together with a jagged, rocky seawall raised to allow for just over 1 foot of sea rise, would help take energy out of large waves, and the setback would use the landscape to dissipate any possible overtopping before it reaches valuable structures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, the engineers have recognized that much of the island — particularly the low-lying northern end — are indefensible. Areas that have flooded in the past will eventually be sacrificed to rising waters. That strategy has immediate, concrete consequences: Dozens of existing structures, including homes of about 3,000 people currently living there, are set to be demolished to create open space. Over time these areas could be turned into tidal marshland to protect the newly developed areas from storms.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Regulators balk at a sunny assessment\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the agency most empowered to weigh in on new waterfront building, is hamstrung by a legal mandate to regulate only what happens 100 feet inland, regardless of elevation — an artifact of legislation dating from before climate change was a dominant concern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2016 permit the agency issued for improvements on Treasure Island’s margins, including a ferry terminal, required adaptation updates every five years. Moffatt and Nichol’s 2021 update concluded that the original adaptation plans needed few changes, except for possibly needing to accelerate, by five years, the planning process for building higher perimeter levees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators balked at the assessment. In a March 2022 letter, the commission advised Moffatt and Nichol to plan more conservatively. The agency demanded consideration of a 1-in-200 chance sea rise scenario, in which seas rise 6 feet, 11 inches by 2100. Adding in a 100-year storm surge, waves could plausibly overtop portions of the sea wall along the southeastern side by about 1 to 2 feet, and along the northern end by about 1 foot. That is an even worse outcome than that predicted by Geological Survey’s localized flooding model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The commission said Moffatt and Nichol seemed too dismissive of chances that things could go wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The permittees decided to design the project considering very low risk of sea level rise related impacts” the letter said, noting also that engineers seemed too focused on the short time horizon of 2080.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trivedi counters that the Treasure Island development was never built upon projections of a certain sea level happening by a certain date, because seawalls can, for all practical purposes, be built arbitrarily high, on whatever schedule is needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We adopted an approach where we decided on an allowance we are building into the project,” he said in the interview. “As future projections come out, we will adjust the date of the adaptation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Commission staff met with planners from Moffatt and Nichol last summer to work out the requested additions to the 2021 adaptation strategy. Buehmann, who worked on the original permit, said follow-up discussions were to be expected because the Treasure Island permit was the first since the commission began requiring builders to submit sea rise assessments. “We didn’t expect it to be perfect the first time,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whatever comes of this process which Trivedi referred to as merely “an internal thing” that was required for the filing — the adaptation plan is unlikely to change significantly, because the development pad is already in place and huge construction cranes are sprouting up on Treasure Island’s skyline. What is left in the playbook is raising future seawalls, ceding the northern open space and the installation of pumps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Government officials have long acknowledged the inevitability of Treasure Island’s relying on artificial barriers. In 2015, Brad McCrea, regulatory program director at the commission, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfpublicpress.org/major-s-f-bayfront-developments-advance-despite-sea-rise-warnings/\">told the Public Press\u003c/a>: “At the end of the day, this will be a levee-protected community — there’s no getting around that.” Since then, agency staff have not changed their view.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Rapidly outdated climate science\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>To determine how high to raise the building pad, Treasure Island builders consulted several climate studies published as early as 1987 and as recently as 2007. At that point, scientists were predicting that by 2100, oceans could rise as much as 4 feet, 7 inches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This forecast was echoed by a state panel of scientists and policy experts in 2009, when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger visited Treasure Island to announce its findings and call for better sea level rise mitigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982136\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982136\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_09-1536x1024-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A view of the San Francisco skyline from Treasure Island.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_09-1536x1024-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_09-1536x1024-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_09-1536x1024-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_09-1536x1024-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_09-1536x1024-1.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">When finished, Treasure Island could be a spectacular locale for commuters to San Francisco to settle. But residents will face similar flooding challenges to those in waterfront communities throughout the Bay Area. \u003ccite>(Yesica Prado/San Francisco Public Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Moffatt and Nichol then relied on these studies to anticipate that the oceans would rise 3 feet by 2075. So the company proposed raising the development pad to 3 feet, 6 inches above the predicted levels for a once-in-a-hundred-year flood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moffatt and Nichol did not spell out a rationale for setting the height of the development pad, as the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfpublicpress.org/uncertain-about-rising-seas-developers-using-mid-range-estimate-to-build-up-island/\">Public Press reported in 2010\u003c/a>. The firm did argue that raising it higher could create other problems, such as jeopardizing the island’s stability under the weight of packed soil and adding expense. “At some point it doesn’t become cost-effective — it’s a matter of acceptable levels of risk over your planning horizon,” Trivedi said in an interview then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be sure, when Treasure Island plans were drawn up, scientific modeling showed wide uncertainty about how much global temperatures could increase. In 2009, scientists around the world were saying that oceans could rise anywhere from a minimum of 3 feet, 3 inches to a maximum of 4 feet, 11 inches by 2100. At that time, the effects of ice melt from land via glaciers, snowpacks and ice caps were little understood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, European and U.S. scientists using satellite imagery to measure the shape of Greenland’s ice sheets say melting is outstripping gains from snowfall. In \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01441-2\">a paper published last August\u003c/a>, they found that no matter how much countries curb emissions, seas will rise by a minimum of 11 inches from this effect alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Focusing locally\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Geological Survey developed the \u003ca href=\"https://ourcoastourfuture.org/science-and-modeling/\">Coastal Storm Modeling System\u003c/a> to help protect waterfront communities. It simulates \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-40742-z#MOESM1\">the forces behind wave and wind data and translates them into local flood projections\u003c/a> that include tides, storm surges, waves and seasonal events such as El Niño.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Public Press requested that the agency simulate a small section of San Francisco Bay, in the vicinity of Treasure Island, relying on probability scenarios for global sea levels in 2100 developed by the \u003ca href=\"https://www.opc.ca.gov/opc-climate-change-program/sea-level-rise-2/\">California Ocean Protection Council\u003c/a> in \u003ca href=\"https://www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/agenda_items/20180314/Item3_Exhibit-A_OPC_SLR_Guidance-rd3.pdf\">a 2018 guidance paper (PDF)\u003c/a>. This report offered up sea rise projections of likelihoods as high as 50% and as low as 0.5%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Ocean Protection Council’s examination of a wide array of probabilities heavily influenced the Bay Conservation and Development Commission’s critique of the Treasure Island adaptation update. The commission’s biggest concern was that change might happen faster than the engineers were anticipating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" allow=\"fullscreen 'none'\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"https://coastal.climatecentral.org/embed/map/13/-122.3736/37.8082/?theme=water_level&map_type=water_level_above_mhhw&basemap=roadmap&contiguous=true&elevation_model=best_available&water_level=7.8&water_unit=ft\" width=\"100%\" height=\"450\" title=\"Climate Central | Land below 7.8 feet of water\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Explore sea level rise scenarios using \u003ca href=\"https://climatecentral.org/\">Climate Central\u003c/a>’s interactive tool. Here we show floodwaters at 7.8 feet above the present-day high tide line.\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Trivedi said the Ocean Protection Council’s past predictions had already failed. “If you look at the year 2022 projections, follow the OPC formulas,” Trivedi said. “We should have seen about 8 inches of sea level rise since 2000. In reality, it has been about 2 inches or less.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most forecasts predict increased global temperatures due to persistent carbon pollution. But the emissions projections are still hotly contested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Ocean Protection Council examined two emissions scenarios. \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200804085912.htm\">One assumed that\u003c/a> carbon dioxide output doubles through 2050. The other imagined more aggressive greenhouse gas reductions — 70% by 2050 and “net zero” emissions by 2080.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the purposes of seeing how bad things could plausibly get, the U.S. Geological Survey used a midlevel emissions scenario. This decision was based on detailed simulations into the next century of swell and waves along the Pacific Ocean. What the researchers found was that paradoxically, milder greenhouse gas levels generated worse storms for California’s coast than do extreme ones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s really changed in the research community is that worst-case scenarios have become more common,” said Patrick Barnard, a research geologist with the agency. “The state is asking communities to prepare for these.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This approach helps waterfront areas learn to be more risk-averse to protect property and lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Avoiding mistakes of the past\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Foster City is paying a high price for waterfront sprawl. Like Treasure Island, the mid-Peninsula community 25 miles to the south was built entirely on landfill, not unusual in the Bay Area, where efforts to accommodate population growth stretching back to the Gold Rush consumed most of the wetlands and tidal marshes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Foster City did have worries about flooding decades ago. It is shot through with artificial waterways, including two sloughs, several small canals and an artificial lagoon. Barely above sea level before being developed, it would not exist if not for its levees and seawalls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet, in 2014 FEMA informed Foster City officials that \u003ca href=\"https://fostercitylevee.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/coastal_flood_hazard_study.pdf\">new studies showed (PDF)\u003c/a> the levee system was neither strong nor tall enough to withstand a major storm and the large waves that would result. Update the seawalls and levees, or the entire city would be designated a floodplain, the agency said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sixty years ago, developers there hauled in tons of sand to raise the land several feet to construct thousands of homes in what became a 33,000-resident community. That was a time when climate change was not a part of city planning vernacular. Today workers are busy widening and raising levees and adding interlocking steel plates as a bulwark against the storms federal regulators warned of, as well as rising seas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Treasure Island, which is slated to add 8,000 units of housing to accommodate more than 20,000 residents, is still more than a decade away from build-out. What the engineers put in place there in the next few years could avoid Foster City’s mistakes — or compound them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be sure, some cities are starting to alter blueprints on pace with the evolving science. In October, the Port of San Francisco announced it was collaborating with the Army Corps of Engineers \u003ca href=\"https://sfport.com/files/2022-10/10112022_item_11a_draft_waterfront_adaptation_strategies_final.pdf\">to study how to shore up the city’s seawall along its eastern waterfront (PDF)\u003c/a>, from Fisherman’s Wharf to the Hunters Point Shipyard, to combat both sea rise and earthquake risk. This area includes attractions like the Chase Center sports arena, a project green-lighted before a city-commissioned study surfaced that predicted flooding from sea level rise in the new Mission Bay neighborhood, as \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfpublicpress.org/projects-sailed-through-despite-dire-flood-study/\">the Public Press reported in 2017\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Port officials now say they anticipate 7 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century. That is 2 feet, 5 inches higher than the level Treasure Island’s developers are planning for in their adaptation strategy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Port’s yearlong effort will consider elevating barriers along the Embarcadero, installing a system of locks at Mission Creek and buying back and cleaning up privately owned landfill areas around Islais Creek to return them to the tidal zone.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Not easy to abandon a home\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the grips of a housing affordability crisis, San Francisco needs new construction. But is a flood zone the wisest place to build? That could depend on how long we expect buildings to last.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barnard, of the U.S. Geological Survey, has traveled to many communities, including Okracoke Island, part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, to assess how to protect people from storms. In September 2019, Hurricane Dorian shut the island down to visitors. For residents, it was hard to consider leaving a place they have inhabited for seven or eight generations. “You can’t detach people from their place, or their heart,” Barnard said. “They’ll stay until water is up to their nose.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the developers moved in, Treasure Island had \u003ca href=\"https://censusreporter.org/profiles/15000US060750179031-bg-1-tract-17903-san-francisco-ca/\">roughly 3,000 residents, according to the 2020 Census\u003c/a>, many living in homes built for the U.S. Navy in the mid-20th century when it was a military base. Nearly half have a household income less than $50,000, and many do not speak English.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now these residents are on tenterhooks. Under an agreement with the developer, people who lived on Treasure Island before 2011 are guaranteed new affordable and rent-controlled units. But the wait times and other inconveniences have been tough. Everyone is living in a construction site with an unreliable electrical grid that browns and blacks out frequently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982137\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1982137\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_12-1536x1024-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"Two people run in a residential area with their dog.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_12-1536x1024-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_12-1536x1024-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_12-1536x1024-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_12-1536x1024-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/04/Treasure_Island_12-1536x1024-1.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Most of the existing low-lying homes on the island, built decades ago, will be razed to make room for new condos, as well as open space that developers say could be abandoned to bay waters as seas rise. \u003ccite>(Yesica Prado/San Francisco Public Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The new units are supposed to be comparable to what they had, but longtime islander Christoph Opperman said they have been offered “interim” units that, for example, might not have enough space for a family, or lack laundry facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re picking us off one neighborhood at a time by making us do two moves,” Opperman said. “We’re not entitled to just anything on the island, but we are entitled to fair treatment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Treasure Island’s planners are essentially acknowledging that they must sacrifice part of the island to the bay, even while pursuing a more built-up urban environment just several hundred feet away. This combination of \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfpublicpress.org/researchers-abandon-neighborhoods-avoid-flood-zone-to-limit-sea-level-rise/\">advance and retreat\u003c/a> is all part of the plan, the engineers say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked whether he would move to Treasure Island, Trivedi did not hesitate to say yes, observing that no part of the Bay Area was completely free of danger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t see why not,” he said. “I mean, should people be moving to San Francisco, because of the seismic risk? Buildings are being designed to codes. And flooding is the same way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This reporting is supported by grants from the\u003ca href=\"https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/topics/business-and-sustainability\"> Solutions Journalism Network’s Business and Sustainability Initiative\u003c/a> and by the \u003ca href=\"http://fij.org/\">Fund for Investigative Journalism\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\">Inside Climate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/newsletter/\">Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/science/1982130/promising-to-prevent-floods-at-treasure-island-builders-downplay-risk-of-sea-rise",
"authors": [
"byline_science_1982130"
],
"categories": [
"science_31",
"science_35",
"science_40",
"science_4450"
],
"tags": [
"science_2455",
"science_194",
"science_460",
"science_206"
],
"featImg": "science_1982131",
"label": "source_science_1982130"
},
"science_1982147": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "science_1982147",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982147",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1680638339000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1680638339,
"format": "standard",
"title": "California Snowpack May Hold Record Amount of Water, With Significant Flooding Possible",
"headTitle": "California Snowpack May Hold Record Amount of Water, With Significant Flooding Possible | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>California water officials reported on Monday that preliminary data showed the water contained in the state’s April snowpack is near historic levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Officials previewed the results after a morning measurement south of Lake Tahoe, where the snowpack exceeded 10.5 feet deep at one of California’s 260 snow measurement locations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state is still waiting for “snow-water equivalent” data to come in from all of those sites, but 2023 may set a historic precedent for the amount of water contained in the state’s April snowpack compared to average levels over the last 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The year 1952 holds the current high on record, at 237% of average. The report is part of a monthly winter and spring custom in the state, where 30% of water comes from melting snow that travels from the mountains down to lower elevations. California’s snowpack usually peaks in April, and the depth of snow affects the state’s water supply all year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, an exceptional number of storms from atmospheric rivers dropped enough precipitation on the state for the snowpack to significantly exceed its early April average. Just a year ago, amid drought, officials were performing the same routine on a small patch of snow that measured “maybe a couple inches,” said Sean de Guzman, manager of snow surveys and the water supply forecasting section at California’s Department of Water Resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that rain and snow has pulled most of the state out of serious drought for the time being, and shifted attention to the existential threat of flooding. In March, Gov. Gavin Newsom eased some drought restrictions. But water constraints will continue to affect certain parts of the state, even those threatened by flooding. Most of the state’s wells for monitoring groundwater are still below normal levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Even though we have this extraordinary snowpack, we know that the droughts are getting deeper and more frequent, and that means we have to use water efficiently, no matter what our hydrologic conditions,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the Department of Water Resources. “It is possible that … there will be simultaneously water supply challenges that come along with drought, but also water supply challenges that come along with very, very significant flooding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change will make California’s precipitation levels more extreme. Last year, April snowpack was at 35% of average. This year, statewide automated snow sensors logged April 1 snowpack at 237% of average, higher than any other year since those sensors were installed in the 1980s, the Department of Water Resources said on Monday. As it melts in the spring and summer, the huge snowpack could send a deluge of water to parts of the state already overwhelmed with flooding and the effects of recent storms. Officials are preparing for disaster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Central Valley, which is home to millions of people and, as a region, grows a significant amount of the country’s food, is particularly vulnerable. A lake once considered the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi that’s been dry for decades has returned, flooding more than 10,000 acres of farmland; Tulare Lake has reappeared in past flood years, but on Monday, the Department of Water Resources said it was forecasting record-breaking spring snowmelt in the Tulare Lake region, including upwards of 422% of average runoff in one river watershed in the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Floods have already breached California levees that protect communities and farmland. California needs to devise both long-term and short-term solutions for climatic and hydrologic extremes, said José Pablo Ortiz Partida, a senior water and climate scientist at the environmental advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The short term is protecting those communities that are likely to get flooded,” Ortiz Partida said, adding that long-term planning should include efforts like restoring floodplains to let water flow and recharge underground supplies before it creates damage. California’s historic system of levees, dams and reservoirs controls where the state’s water is able to travel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Department of Water Resources’ Flood Operations Center “will remain on the ready” as melting begins, said Jeremy Arrich, manager of the department’s Division of Flood Management. How quickly the snow melts and flows to lower elevations will depend on spring temperatures as well as soil conditions — saturated soil and burned soil can contribute to runoff because the ground cannot absorb water. Scientists are also concerned about further rainstorms, which could \u003ca href=\"https://theconversation.com/why-rain-on-snow-in-the-california-mountains-worries-scientists-201742\">spur faster melting if they creep into the mountains\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Based on current measurements, the snowpack’s snow-water content is greatest in the central and southern Sierra. Some northern parts of the state remain in drought, as do some areas along the border with Arizona and Nevada. California has been measuring snowpack since 1910 and has added sensor-driven measurements as well as aerial snow observations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of April 1, California’s water managers shifted from monitoring snow to monitoring runoff, using data and measurements to determine when and how much water will drain into certain parts of the state. Snow surveys usually begin in January and end in April. This year, officials also plan to conduct snowpack measurements in May.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is truly an extraordinary moment, but we don’t get to stop and enjoy that for too long. We are absolutely very focused on public safety and flood protection,” said Nemeth. “Much more work to be done to adapt to our new climate realities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\">Inside Climate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/newsletter/\">Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 967,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 18
},
"modified": 1704846058,
"excerpt": "Recently wracked by drought, California is now bracing for the possibility that even more water will deluge communities already overwhelmed by floods.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "Recently wracked by drought, California is now bracing for the possibility that even more water will deluge communities already overwhelmed by floods.",
"title": "California Snowpack May Hold Record Amount of Water, With Significant Flooding Possible | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "California Snowpack May Hold Record Amount of Water, With Significant Flooding Possible",
"datePublished": "2023-04-04T12:58:59-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-09T16:20:58-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "california-snowpack-may-hold-record-amount-of-water-with-significant-flooding-possible",
"status": "publish",
"nprByline": "\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/profile/emma-foehringer-merchant/\">Emma Foehringer Merchant\u003c/a>",
"excludeFromSiteSearch": "Include",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Inside Climate News",
"showOnAuthorArchivePages": "No",
"articleAge": "0",
"path": "/science/1982147/california-snowpack-may-hold-record-amount-of-water-with-significant-flooding-possible",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>California water officials reported on Monday that preliminary data showed the water contained in the state’s April snowpack is near historic levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Officials previewed the results after a morning measurement south of Lake Tahoe, where the snowpack exceeded 10.5 feet deep at one of California’s 260 snow measurement locations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state is still waiting for “snow-water equivalent” data to come in from all of those sites, but 2023 may set a historic precedent for the amount of water contained in the state’s April snowpack compared to average levels over the last 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The year 1952 holds the current high on record, at 237% of average. The report is part of a monthly winter and spring custom in the state, where 30% of water comes from melting snow that travels from the mountains down to lower elevations. California’s snowpack usually peaks in April, and the depth of snow affects the state’s water supply all year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, an exceptional number of storms from atmospheric rivers dropped enough precipitation on the state for the snowpack to significantly exceed its early April average. Just a year ago, amid drought, officials were performing the same routine on a small patch of snow that measured “maybe a couple inches,” said Sean de Guzman, manager of snow surveys and the water supply forecasting section at California’s Department of Water Resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All that rain and snow has pulled most of the state out of serious drought for the time being, and shifted attention to the existential threat of flooding. In March, Gov. Gavin Newsom eased some drought restrictions. But water constraints will continue to affect certain parts of the state, even those threatened by flooding. Most of the state’s wells for monitoring groundwater are still below normal levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Even though we have this extraordinary snowpack, we know that the droughts are getting deeper and more frequent, and that means we have to use water efficiently, no matter what our hydrologic conditions,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the Department of Water Resources. “It is possible that … there will be simultaneously water supply challenges that come along with drought, but also water supply challenges that come along with very, very significant flooding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change will make California’s precipitation levels more extreme. Last year, April snowpack was at 35% of average. This year, statewide automated snow sensors logged April 1 snowpack at 237% of average, higher than any other year since those sensors were installed in the 1980s, the Department of Water Resources said on Monday. As it melts in the spring and summer, the huge snowpack could send a deluge of water to parts of the state already overwhelmed with flooding and the effects of recent storms. Officials are preparing for disaster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Central Valley, which is home to millions of people and, as a region, grows a significant amount of the country’s food, is particularly vulnerable. A lake once considered the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi that’s been dry for decades has returned, flooding more than 10,000 acres of farmland; Tulare Lake has reappeared in past flood years, but on Monday, the Department of Water Resources said it was forecasting record-breaking spring snowmelt in the Tulare Lake region, including upwards of 422% of average runoff in one river watershed in the region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Floods have already breached California levees that protect communities and farmland. California needs to devise both long-term and short-term solutions for climatic and hydrologic extremes, said José Pablo Ortiz Partida, a senior water and climate scientist at the environmental advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The short term is protecting those communities that are likely to get flooded,” Ortiz Partida said, adding that long-term planning should include efforts like restoring floodplains to let water flow and recharge underground supplies before it creates damage. California’s historic system of levees, dams and reservoirs controls where the state’s water is able to travel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Department of Water Resources’ Flood Operations Center “will remain on the ready” as melting begins, said Jeremy Arrich, manager of the department’s Division of Flood Management. How quickly the snow melts and flows to lower elevations will depend on spring temperatures as well as soil conditions — saturated soil and burned soil can contribute to runoff because the ground cannot absorb water. Scientists are also concerned about further rainstorms, which could \u003ca href=\"https://theconversation.com/why-rain-on-snow-in-the-california-mountains-worries-scientists-201742\">spur faster melting if they creep into the mountains\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Based on current measurements, the snowpack’s snow-water content is greatest in the central and southern Sierra. Some northern parts of the state remain in drought, as do some areas along the border with Arizona and Nevada. California has been measuring snowpack since 1910 and has added sensor-driven measurements as well as aerial snow observations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of April 1, California’s water managers shifted from monitoring snow to monitoring runoff, using data and measurements to determine when and how much water will drain into certain parts of the state. Snow surveys usually begin in January and end in April. This year, officials also plan to conduct snowpack measurements in May.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is truly an extraordinary moment, but we don’t get to stop and enjoy that for too long. We are absolutely very focused on public safety and flood protection,” said Nemeth. “Much more work to be done to adapt to our new climate realities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/\">Inside Climate News\u003c/a> is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. \u003ca href=\"https://insideclimatenews.org/newsletter/\">Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/science/1982147/california-snowpack-may-hold-record-amount-of-water-with-significant-flooding-possible",
"authors": [
"byline_science_1982147"
],
"categories": [
"science_31",
"science_35",
"science_40",
"science_4450",
"science_98"
],
"tags": [
"science_3905",
"science_194",
"science_572",
"science_3448",
"science_1462"
],
"featImg": "science_1982148",
"label": "source_science_1982147"
},
"science_1982079": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "science_1982079",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982079",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1680212940000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {
"site": "science"
},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1680212940,
"format": "standard",
"title": "This Winter's Floods May Be 'Only a Taste' of the Megafloods to Come, Climate Scientists Warn",
"headTitle": "This Winter’s Floods May Be ‘Only a Taste’ of the Megafloods to Come, Climate Scientists Warn | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The street in front of Antonio Hueso’s two-story, yellow-daisy-colored home in Pajaro turned into a 5-foot-deep muddy river in the early morning hours of March 12, submerging his baby-blue Ford F-150 truck and flooding his first floor.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Daniel Swain, UCLA climate scientist\"]‘As disruptive as this year’s events have been, we’re nowhere near to a plausible worst-case storm and flood scenario for California.’[/pullquote] “In Pajaro, nothing is going to change, because poor people live here,” said Hueso, 72, a retired farmworker, recounting more than three decades of requests from the community for local, state and federal officials to fix the aging levee on the Pajaro River, 4 miles upstream of his town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several weeks after the levee failed — once again — forcing thousands of Pajaro residents to flee in the predawn darkness as water rushed toward their lower-income community in northern Monterey County, Hueso is beginning the arduous task of renovating his flood-damaged home. Over the nearly five decades he’s lived here, this is now the second time he has had to do this — having already lived through an \u003ca href=\"https://www.ksbw.com/article/pajaro-valley-flood-of-1995-described-by-ksbw-8-s-jim-vanderzwaan/42479036\">equally devastating flood in 1995\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Officials say a major levee update could begin as soon as 2025, but Hueso questions whether those plans will account for the changing climate and the increased frequency and ferocity of storms expected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982087\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982087\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An older man wearing a hat, a plaid shirt and jeans stands in a driveway outside a house. A Ford truck is parked behind him.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Antonio Hueso, 72, in the driveway of his home in Pajaro on March 24, 2023. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He is now considering leaving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m going to fix my house, and when people forget about the flooding, I will sell my house and move to Madera or Fresno,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Nowhere near’ a worst-case scenario\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Climate scientists warn that what Californians have lived through in recent months is just a preview of what’s to come, with exponentially worse flooding predicted in future years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As disruptive as this year’s events have been, we’re nowhere near to a plausible worst-case storm and flood scenario for California,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before cities and farmland dominated the terrain, much of California was perpetually wet, with a vast system of rivers and waterways running through its core. Catastrophic floods reshaped the landscape every few centuries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swain is unequivocal about the links between a warming climate due to the burning of fossil fuels and the significant increase in extreme flooding. A 2022 study Swain co-authored found that \u003ca href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq0995\">the warming climate has already doubled the probability of a megaflood\u003c/a> caused by a string of extreme atmospheric rivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every degree of new warming increases that likelihood even more, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, what was once considered unlikely to happen in our lifetimes “has become quite likely,” Swain said, adding that he wouldn’t be surprised if as many as four megafloods happened just in this century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982091\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982091 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mud-coated furniture and other belongings are piled outside a home in Pajaro on March 24, 2023. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We’re not necessarily talking about 100 years from now. We’re talking about the next 20 or 30 years,” he said. “We’ve gotten a taste of widespread flooding, but I do think it’s only a taste.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California has already been hit by more than 30 atmospheric rivers since October. But in order to be categorized as an extreme scenario, those weather events would have had to take place in rapid succession, with little or no time in between.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, by contrast, there were breaks of up to a month between each of the storms. And despite the havoc they wreaked, none were technically considered “extreme,” Swain said.[aside label=\"related coverage\" tag=\"flooding\"]“This winter, we’ve gotten lucky, believe it or not, because things could have been significantly worse than they were,” he said. “It is possible to have years where there are multiple atmospheric rivers in a row that are much stronger than what we saw at any point this year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swain said the recent storms dropped only about half the precipitation and less than a quarter of the runoff than in the “plausible worst-case scenario” he describes in his study. The resulting “megaflood” conditions, he said, would cause “widespread levee failures, and not just levees protecting primarily agricultural areas, but potentially levees that protect major urban areas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A KQED analysis of the National Levee Database found that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1981900/fewer-than-10-of-levees-in-the-greater-bay-area-have-a-federal-risk-rating\">only 10% of the nearly 600 levees in the greater Bay Area have a flood-risk rating\u003c/a>. The small percentage that do include the breached levee on the Pajaro River, which is rated “moderate,” as is one on the \u003ca href=\"https://abc7news.com/salinas-river-flooding-levee-break-overflowing-monterey-county-evacuations/12697763/\">Salinas River, which also failed, in January\u003c/a>, displacing thousands. Other levees rated “moderate,” in more urban areas like San José, also are at risk of significant flooding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve definitely gotten a taste in some areas of what a much lesser version of this would look like,” Swain said. “But we need to be preparing for and stress-testing our infrastructure for much greater events than the ones you’ve seen this year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Flood modeling\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California is taking Swain’s predictions seriously by potentially funding \u003ca href=\"https://triton.ornl.gov/\">a flood-modeling project\u003c/a> — in partnership with Swain and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory — to gain a better understanding of the impact an extended series of extreme storms would have on existing infrastructure, like levees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a flood model that would resolve the flood risk at one corner of someone’s house versus another corner, for example,” Swain said. “That’s how detailed it would be for the whole state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982092\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982092 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An older man and younger man stand outside a light-green house, next to a pile of mud-damaged belongings, including a red refrigerator and blue office chair.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Armando Alvarado, 22, and his father, Jesús Valtierra, 52, stand outside their home in Pajaro on March 24, 2023. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The project involves recording a host of factors, including soil conditions, river flows, forecasted precipitation, real-time snowmelt and runoff, in an effort to calculate the extent of flooding that could result from storms of various intensities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doing so could also help predict which parts of the state are at greatest risk of flooding and who should evacuate, said Michael Anderson, the state’s climatologist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The other thing we can do is start saying, ‘Wow, if that happened, how do we recover?”’ Anderson said. “How do we take that really horrible situation and try and turn it into a chance to maybe rethink how we do some things?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Anderson notes the project, which could take up to a year to complete and would cost in the ballpark of half a million dollars, is coming too late for the many thousands of people already displaced by floods this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unfortunately, Mother Nature kind of beat us to the punch here,” he said. “But we’re trying to develop a capability that can work with the scenario to help us better understand how to recognize when things are scaling up so that you get the right level of response dialed in. And it’s a tool we don’t have right now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982093\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982093\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A mud-caked, ramshackle-looking backyard. A door to a small shed stands open. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Thick, foul-smelling mud coats the ground in Juan Escutia’s backyard in Pajaro on March 24, 2023. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Living in the shadow of an aging levee\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For young people like Armando Alvarado, who now lives in the shadow of a broken levee, the climate crisis is all too real. A week after floodwaters covered Pajaro, the 22-year-old returned home to find his garage coated with a thick layer of sticky, putrid mud — even as the rest of the elevated home his family rents was unscathed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the wet mud in the garage ruined a number of family heirlooms, including his collection of red, white and black ostrich-leather ranchero boots.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation= \"Denia Escutia, Pajaro resident\"]‘I call this my home, but is it really my home if they don’t want to help us?’[/pullquote] “They were emotional gifts from my family in Mexico, like uncles that passed away,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alvarado said he’s worried about how the damage from the flood, and the remodeling it will require, will affect the price of rent in an area of California where a one-bedroom apartment can cost as much as $2,800.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Denia Escutia, a high school senior who lives a few blocks south of Alvarado, woke up early in the morning on March 12 to the sound of water pouring into Escutia’s purple bedroom adorned with K-pop posters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I touched my feet to the rug, and the rug was wet,” said Escutia, 18, who prefers to not use any pronouns. Escutia’s entire house had filled with a thin layer of smelly, muddy water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I woke up my dad, and we started unplugging a bunch of stuff,” Escutia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982088\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982088\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A young person in rubber boots stands in a small bedroom with posters on the blue-painted wall and mud on the floor.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Climate activist and Pajaro Valley High School senior Denia Escutia, 18, in Escutia’s mud-coated bedroom in Pajaro on March 24, 2023. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, weeks after the flooding and subsequent evacuation, the young climate activist is questioning whether or not to see a future in Pajaro because of the obvious, familiar risks — including droughts, heat waves and flooding — that will likely only get worse with a warming climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Escutia, whose hometown is Pajaro and who dreams of living safely on a nearby hill, surrounded by family, fears Pajaro has no future because of climate change and the decisions made by those in power that devalue the people living here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think Pajaro deserves climate justice,” said Escutia. “I call this my home, but is it really my home if they don’t want to help us?”\u003cbr>\n[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 1706,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 34
},
"modified": 1704846059,
"excerpt": "Climate scientists warn that what Californians have lived through in recent months is just a preview of what's to come, with exponentially worse flooding predicted for the future.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "Climate scientists warn that what Californians have lived through in recent months is just a preview of what's to come, with exponentially worse flooding predicted for the future.",
"title": "This Winter's Floods May Be 'Only a Taste' of the Megafloods to Come, Climate Scientists Warn | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "This Winter's Floods May Be 'Only a Taste' of the Megafloods to Come, Climate Scientists Warn",
"datePublished": "2023-03-30T14:49:00-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-09T16:20:59-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "this-winters-floods-may-be-only-a-taste-of-the-megafloods-to-come-climate-scientists-warn",
"status": "publish",
"audioUrl": "https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/0af137ef-751e-4b19-a055-aaef00d2d578/ffca7e9f-6831-41c5-bcaf-aaef00f5a073/2ab2c2f0-007c-4e7b-82e8-afd4010472d3/audio.mp3",
"excludeFromSiteSearch": "Include",
"sticky": false,
"articleAge": "0",
"path": "/science/1982079/this-winters-floods-may-be-only-a-taste-of-the-megafloods-to-come-climate-scientists-warn",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The street in front of Antonio Hueso’s two-story, yellow-daisy-colored home in Pajaro turned into a 5-foot-deep muddy river in the early morning hours of March 12, submerging his baby-blue Ford F-150 truck and flooding his first floor.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "‘As disruptive as this year’s events have been, we’re nowhere near to a plausible worst-case storm and flood scenario for California.’",
"name": "pullquote",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"align": "right",
"size": "medium",
"citation": "Daniel Swain, UCLA climate scientist",
"label": ""
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp> “In Pajaro, nothing is going to change, because poor people live here,” said Hueso, 72, a retired farmworker, recounting more than three decades of requests from the community for local, state and federal officials to fix the aging levee on the Pajaro River, 4 miles upstream of his town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several weeks after the levee failed — once again — forcing thousands of Pajaro residents to flee in the predawn darkness as water rushed toward their lower-income community in northern Monterey County, Hueso is beginning the arduous task of renovating his flood-damaged home. Over the nearly five decades he’s lived here, this is now the second time he has had to do this — having already lived through an \u003ca href=\"https://www.ksbw.com/article/pajaro-valley-flood-of-1995-described-by-ksbw-8-s-jim-vanderzwaan/42479036\">equally devastating flood in 1995\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Officials say a major levee update could begin as soon as 2025, but Hueso questions whether those plans will account for the changing climate and the increased frequency and ferocity of storms expected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982087\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982087\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An older man wearing a hat, a plaid shirt and jeans stands in a driveway outside a house. A Ford truck is parked behind him.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63905_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1133-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Antonio Hueso, 72, in the driveway of his home in Pajaro on March 24, 2023. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He is now considering leaving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m going to fix my house, and when people forget about the flooding, I will sell my house and move to Madera or Fresno,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Nowhere near’ a worst-case scenario\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Climate scientists warn that what Californians have lived through in recent months is just a preview of what’s to come, with exponentially worse flooding predicted in future years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As disruptive as this year’s events have been, we’re nowhere near to a plausible worst-case storm and flood scenario for California,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before cities and farmland dominated the terrain, much of California was perpetually wet, with a vast system of rivers and waterways running through its core. Catastrophic floods reshaped the landscape every few centuries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swain is unequivocal about the links between a warming climate due to the burning of fossil fuels and the significant increase in extreme flooding. A 2022 study Swain co-authored found that \u003ca href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq0995\">the warming climate has already doubled the probability of a megaflood\u003c/a> caused by a string of extreme atmospheric rivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every degree of new warming increases that likelihood even more, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, what was once considered unlikely to happen in our lifetimes “has become quite likely,” Swain said, adding that he wouldn’t be surprised if as many as four megafloods happened just in this century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982091\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982091 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63947_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1924-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mud-coated furniture and other belongings are piled outside a home in Pajaro on March 24, 2023. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We’re not necessarily talking about 100 years from now. We’re talking about the next 20 or 30 years,” he said. “We’ve gotten a taste of widespread flooding, but I do think it’s only a taste.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California has already been hit by more than 30 atmospheric rivers since October. But in order to be categorized as an extreme scenario, those weather events would have had to take place in rapid succession, with little or no time in between.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, by contrast, there were breaks of up to a month between each of the storms. And despite the havoc they wreaked, none were technically considered “extreme,” Swain said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "related coverage ",
"tag": "flooding"
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“This winter, we’ve gotten lucky, believe it or not, because things could have been significantly worse than they were,” he said. “It is possible to have years where there are multiple atmospheric rivers in a row that are much stronger than what we saw at any point this year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Swain said the recent storms dropped only about half the precipitation and less than a quarter of the runoff than in the “plausible worst-case scenario” he describes in his study. The resulting “megaflood” conditions, he said, would cause “widespread levee failures, and not just levees protecting primarily agricultural areas, but potentially levees that protect major urban areas.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A KQED analysis of the National Levee Database found that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1981900/fewer-than-10-of-levees-in-the-greater-bay-area-have-a-federal-risk-rating\">only 10% of the nearly 600 levees in the greater Bay Area have a flood-risk rating\u003c/a>. The small percentage that do include the breached levee on the Pajaro River, which is rated “moderate,” as is one on the \u003ca href=\"https://abc7news.com/salinas-river-flooding-levee-break-overflowing-monterey-county-evacuations/12697763/\">Salinas River, which also failed, in January\u003c/a>, displacing thousands. Other levees rated “moderate,” in more urban areas like San José, also are at risk of significant flooding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve definitely gotten a taste in some areas of what a much lesser version of this would look like,” Swain said. “But we need to be preparing for and stress-testing our infrastructure for much greater events than the ones you’ve seen this year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Flood modeling\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California is taking Swain’s predictions seriously by potentially funding \u003ca href=\"https://triton.ornl.gov/\">a flood-modeling project\u003c/a> — in partnership with Swain and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory — to gain a better understanding of the impact an extended series of extreme storms would have on existing infrastructure, like levees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a flood model that would resolve the flood risk at one corner of someone’s house versus another corner, for example,” Swain said. “That’s how detailed it would be for the whole state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982092\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982092 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut.jpg\" alt=\"An older man and younger man stand outside a light-green house, next to a pile of mud-damaged belongings, including a red refrigerator and blue office chair.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63951_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1970-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Armando Alvarado, 22, and his father, Jesús Valtierra, 52, stand outside their home in Pajaro on March 24, 2023. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The project involves recording a host of factors, including soil conditions, river flows, forecasted precipitation, real-time snowmelt and runoff, in an effort to calculate the extent of flooding that could result from storms of various intensities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doing so could also help predict which parts of the state are at greatest risk of flooding and who should evacuate, said Michael Anderson, the state’s climatologist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The other thing we can do is start saying, ‘Wow, if that happened, how do we recover?”’ Anderson said. “How do we take that really horrible situation and try and turn it into a chance to maybe rethink how we do some things?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Anderson notes the project, which could take up to a year to complete and would cost in the ballpark of half a million dollars, is coming too late for the many thousands of people already displaced by floods this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Unfortunately, Mother Nature kind of beat us to the punch here,” he said. “But we’re trying to develop a capability that can work with the scenario to help us better understand how to recognize when things are scaling up so that you get the right level of response dialed in. And it’s a tool we don’t have right now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982093\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982093\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A mud-caked, ramshackle-looking backyard. A door to a small shed stands open. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63915_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1253-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Thick, foul-smelling mud coats the ground in Juan Escutia’s backyard in Pajaro on March 24, 2023. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Living in the shadow of an aging levee\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For young people like Armando Alvarado, who now lives in the shadow of a broken levee, the climate crisis is all too real. A week after floodwaters covered Pajaro, the 22-year-old returned home to find his garage coated with a thick layer of sticky, putrid mud — even as the rest of the elevated home his family rents was unscathed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the wet mud in the garage ruined a number of family heirlooms, including his collection of red, white and black ostrich-leather ranchero boots.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "‘I call this my home, but is it really my home if they don’t want to help us?’",
"name": "pullquote",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"align": "right",
"size": "medium",
"citation": "Denia Escutia, Pajaro resident",
"label": ""
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp> “They were emotional gifts from my family in Mexico, like uncles that passed away,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alvarado said he’s worried about how the damage from the flood, and the remodeling it will require, will affect the price of rent in an area of California where a one-bedroom apartment can cost as much as $2,800.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Denia Escutia, a high school senior who lives a few blocks south of Alvarado, woke up early in the morning on March 12 to the sound of water pouring into Escutia’s purple bedroom adorned with K-pop posters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I touched my feet to the rug, and the rug was wet,” said Escutia, 18, who prefers to not use any pronouns. Escutia’s entire house had filled with a thin layer of smelly, muddy water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I woke up my dad, and we started unplugging a bunch of stuff,” Escutia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982088\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1982088\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A young person in rubber boots stands in a small bedroom with posters on the blue-painted wall and mud on the floor.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63917_03242023_kqed_pajaroreturning-1292-qut-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Climate activist and Pajaro Valley High School senior Denia Escutia, 18, in Escutia’s mud-coated bedroom in Pajaro on March 24, 2023. \u003ccite>(Kori Suzuki/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, weeks after the flooding and subsequent evacuation, the young climate activist is questioning whether or not to see a future in Pajaro because of the obvious, familiar risks — including droughts, heat waves and flooding — that will likely only get worse with a warming climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Escutia, whose hometown is Pajaro and who dreams of living safely on a nearby hill, surrounded by family, fears Pajaro has no future because of climate change and the decisions made by those in power that devalue the people living here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think Pajaro deserves climate justice,” said Escutia. “I call this my home, but is it really my home if they don’t want to help us?”\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/science/1982079/this-winters-floods-may-be-only-a-taste-of-the-megafloods-to-come-climate-scientists-warn",
"authors": [
"11746"
],
"categories": [
"science_31",
"science_40",
"science_4450"
],
"tags": [
"science_194",
"science_1754",
"science_4414",
"science_2114"
],
"featImg": "science_1982097",
"label": "science"
},
"science_1982049": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "science_1982049",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1982049",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1680177654000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {
"site": "science"
},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1680177654,
"format": "standard",
"title": "Could Carbon Removal Be California's Next Big Boom Industry?",
"headTitle": "Could Carbon Removal Be California’s Next Big Boom Industry? | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Shaun Kinetic rests his hand on what looks like an out-of-place pile of hay bales. The bales, which are actually the leftovers from a corn harvest, sit under a shade structure in a parking lot in an industrial area of San Francisco sandwiched between highways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those corn stalks, leaves and cobs would normally get plowed back into the field they came from in Half Moon Bay, or be left to decompose, releasing the carbon inside them back into the atmosphere. Only some of these leftovers are needed \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/2016-billion-ton-report\">to maintain soil health\u003c/a> and prevent erosion.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Assemblymember Matt Haney\"]‘Decades ago, San Francisco and the Bay Area were home to the explosion of the information technology sector. … We want to have the Bay Area be the similar home for carbon capture and carbon removal.’[/pullquote]The rest will get ground down to dust, injected into the 1,000-degree belly of a large metal cylinder — called a pyrolyzer — and be transformed within seconds into three products: a gas, an ash — or “char” — and a viscous black goo that looks like molasses and smells like barbecue sauce, called bio-oil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The gas is then burned to heat the process,” said Kinetic, co-founder of the company \u003ca href=\"https://charmindustrial.com/\">Charm Industrial\u003c/a>. “The char is returned to the field as a soil additive, and the bio-oil is pumped underground as a permanent carbon-removal technology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://charmindustrial.com/registry\">Charm has sequestered some 6,000 tons of carbon since 2020\u003c/a>, when Kinetic, who has a background in aerospace engineering, first invented the bio-oil sequestration technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Customers now include major tech companies like Stripe, Shopify and Microsoft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yes, Shaun’s last name really is Kinetic, which he and his wife, Kelly, one of the company’s four founders, adopted when they married a few years ago. The couple left Charm in February 2023 for reasons the company did not disclose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company uses physical equipment and even old, abandoned oil wells to send the bio-oil underground — one of the many approaches in the burgeoning field of carbon removal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982064\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982064 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\" alt='A short, squat glass bottle with a large, twist-on, bright blue plastic top, half-filled with a dark brown liquid. A rectangular white card sits upright in a gold-colored holder, with \"Bio-oil Pathfinder/July 2021\" hand-printed in black ink. A second, similar bottle sits to the left, with its own hand-printed sign, and two jars that appear to be partly filled with dirt sit behind it. Beyond all this, on what looks to be the back of a shelf, is a photograph of what appears to be rolling, brown hills.' width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sample of the bio-oil Charm Industrial produces (center), on display at the company’s facility in San Francisco on March 28, 2023. ‘It’s carbon, embodied,’ says co-founder Shaun Kinetic. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Charm frequently hires former fossil-fuel industry workers to orchestrate the process, as they are often the ones most familiar with the equipment involved.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A local job creator?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-11/2022-sp.pdf\">For California to meet its ambitious climate goals, which include becoming carbon-neutral by 2045 (PDF)\u003c/a>, the state will need to capture or remove about \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-11/2022-sp.pdf\">100 million tons of carbon dioxide (PDF)\u003c/a> each year, roughly equivalent to \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-11/2022-sp.pdf\">the pollution created by 250 gas-power plants (PDF)\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike \u003ca href=\"https://www.c2es.org/content/carbon-capture/\">carbon capture\u003c/a>, which involves trapping polluting greenhouse gasses at their source of emissions, carbon removal entails pulling the gas out of the atmosphere through either nature-based approaches, like conserving existing wetlands, or technological methods, like the one used by Charm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And local and state lawmakers are increasingly showing interest in supporting those efforts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Decades ago, San Francisco and the Bay Area were home to the explosion of the information technology sector,” said Assemblymember Matt Haney, a San Francisco Democrat. “It started small and then it grew to transform the world. We want to have the Bay Area be the similar home for carbon capture and carbon removal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doing so, he added, could also create a lot of jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982066\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982066 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A young white man with short blond hair, wearing jeans and a puffy jacket in stripes of blue, gray and gold, stands in front of a stack of hay bales. He holds an amber-colored cob in his right hand and looks down at it, smiling, while his left hand rests in his pocket.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Peter Reinhardt, another Charm Industrial co-founder, explains the process of removing carbon from the large bales of corn stalks, leaves and cobs that get delivered to the company’s San Francisco facility. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s not just folks who can do the engineering and the technology, the financing, but we actually need skilled industrial labor,” Haney said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat from Irvine, said California could become a hub for this kind of work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want those innovators to come to California. I want them to grow their businesses here,” Petrie-Norris said. “I think that there’s a lot of work that we need to do as policymakers to create a foundation and to create the right incentives to bring them here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pulling carbon out of the atmosphere\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>To avoid exacerbating an already catastrophic climate crisis, humans need to first and foremost stop putting planet-warming gasses into the air. But there is also an urgent need to draw down an enormous amount of the carbon pollution that has already been created.[aside label=\"Related Stories\" tag=\"climate\"]A \u003ca href=\"https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/\">recent international climate report\u003c/a> went as far as to call carbon removal an “unavoidable” strategy if countries are to meet their emissions-reduction goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Carbon removal refers to things you can do, whether it involves nature-based systems or technologies and engineered systems to literally pull CO2 out of the atmosphere,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.ghgpolicy.org/\">Danny Cullenward\u003c/a>, a research fellow with the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy at American University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cullenward notes that the world’s forests and oceans are actively pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through a natural carbon cycle, independent of human involvement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The problem is, if we don’t intervene in these systems, they won’t suck up enough because we’ve put such an unfathomably large quantity of pollution in the atmosphere in the first place,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all interventions are created equal. Lots of \u003ca href=\"https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2022/11/17/carbon-credits-flights-claim-offset-emissions-do-they-work/10707844002/\">carbon offsets, often including those offered as add-ons during plane ticket bookings\u003c/a>, go toward established projects that are already underway. Directing more money toward them doesn’t always translate directly into more carbon removal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alternatively, with projects like Charm’s, the more money invested, the more carbon removed, a business model that Cullenward argues is ultimately more effective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also notes it’s important to consider the amount of time the carbon will stay sequestered, and out of the atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we burn fossil fuels, about three-quarters, 80%, of the CO2 we burn stays in the atmosphere for something on the order of 200 to thousands of years,” Cullenward said. “The remainder stays put through geologic time. It’s essentially permanent.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982065\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982065 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A large white machine with various pipes and container sits on a flatbed truck. Behind it, a sign reads, 'Charm Industrial.'\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Charm Industrial’s pyrolyzer, which turns agricultural waste into the carbon-concentrated bio-oil product. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Cullenward says some carbon-removal strategies will sequester carbon in a forest for a period of decades, which can be good, and is better than nothing. But other carbon-removal strategies, like those storing carbon deep underground in wells and geological formations, have the potential to contain it there for thousands of years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s one of the reasons he thinks Charm’s approach is a good one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The injection wells are pretty close to a forever solution from the standpoint of the time duration of carbon storage,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Fear of ‘unintended consequences’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Katie Valenzuela, senior policy advocate with the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition, and a Sacramento City Council member, describes herself as a “front-line kid who grew up in Kern County,” where most of California’s oil is drilled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because of its unique geology, \u003ca href=\"https://gs.llnl.gov/sites/gs/files/2021-08/getting_to_neutral.pdf\">the Central Valley has also been identified as a “highly suitable” place to store carbon (PDF)\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every time we have this great new idea that we want to test out, it lands in the Central Valley somehow, and ends up having unintended consequences that weren’t foreseen, that then we have to deal with,” Valenzuela said. “The safety and health impacts of how you transport this stuff, where it is stored, how it is used, carry real consequences for our communities and are going to be targeting the types of communities that have already borne the brunt of things like oil extraction for decades.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982070\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982070 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A young white-presenting man with dark brown hair, a dark moustache, and slight beard, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a black zip-up jacket, holds two parts of the same sort of hose, as if he might be coupling or uncoupling them. He stands in what seems to be a very large, brightly lit warehouse, with things like a rolling whiteboard, a fire extinguisher, and tables in the background.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Andrew Radbel, a mechanical engineer at Charm Industrial, repairs a cyclone test skid, a machine that tests particulate filtration before material is put in the carbon-removing pyrolyzer. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Valenzuela is fine with carbon removal in theory, but worries it will allow oil and gas companies to hide behind new technologies and continue drilling and polluting her home. She notes the process is important, but it doesn’t ameliorate the existing pollution from heavy industry that directly impacts the health of her community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I wish that we could take care of the communities who need it the most first, and then explore the other thing that we know we need to do,” Valenzuela said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘We need to get to work’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Sarah Baker, a chemist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was a lead author of \u003ca href=\"https://livermorelabfoundation.org/2019/12/19/getting-to-neutral/\">a 2020 report laying out California’s potential path for getting to zero emissions by 2045\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She still thinks that goal is within reach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s building a lot of equipment and infrastructure and moving biomass and moving CO2, but we can do it with technologies that exist today,” Baker told state lawmakers during a presentation earlier this year. “This is not magic, we don’t need multiple miracles. We need to get to work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Charm co-founder Shaun Kinetic feels similarly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It effectively needs to be a wartime effort,” he said. “The oil and gas infrastructure that currently exists out to the horizon needs to be replaced with carbon removal.”\u003cbr>\n[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 1624,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 38
},
"modified": 1704846063,
"excerpt": "A growing number of local and state leaders are taking notice of the fledgling carbon-removal industry — which works to sequester the greenhouse gas — as a potential means to create jobs and help California meet its ambitious climate goals.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "A growing number of local and state leaders are taking notice of the fledgling carbon-removal industry — which works to sequester the greenhouse gas — as a potential means to create jobs and help California meet its ambitious climate goals.",
"title": "Could Carbon Removal Be California's Next Big Boom Industry? | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Could Carbon Removal Be California's Next Big Boom Industry?",
"datePublished": "2023-03-30T05:00:54-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-09T16:21:03-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "could-carbon-removal-be-californias-next-big-boom-industry",
"status": "publish",
"audioUrl": "https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/0af137ef-751e-4b19-a055-aaef00d2d578/ffca7e9f-6831-41c5-bcaf-aaef00f5a073/559b575f-8349-4d6b-a6b9-afd4011caf1b/audio.mp3",
"excludeFromSiteSearch": "Include",
"sticky": false,
"articleAge": "0",
"path": "/science/1982049/could-carbon-removal-be-californias-next-big-boom-industry",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Shaun Kinetic rests his hand on what looks like an out-of-place pile of hay bales. The bales, which are actually the leftovers from a corn harvest, sit under a shade structure in a parking lot in an industrial area of San Francisco sandwiched between highways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those corn stalks, leaves and cobs would normally get plowed back into the field they came from in Half Moon Bay, or be left to decompose, releasing the carbon inside them back into the atmosphere. Only some of these leftovers are needed \u003ca href=\"https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/2016-billion-ton-report\">to maintain soil health\u003c/a> and prevent erosion.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "‘Decades ago, San Francisco and the Bay Area were home to the explosion of the information technology sector. … We want to have the Bay Area be the similar home for carbon capture and carbon removal.’",
"name": "pullquote",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"align": "right",
"size": "medium",
"citation": "Assemblymember Matt Haney",
"label": ""
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The rest will get ground down to dust, injected into the 1,000-degree belly of a large metal cylinder — called a pyrolyzer — and be transformed within seconds into three products: a gas, an ash — or “char” — and a viscous black goo that looks like molasses and smells like barbecue sauce, called bio-oil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The gas is then burned to heat the process,” said Kinetic, co-founder of the company \u003ca href=\"https://charmindustrial.com/\">Charm Industrial\u003c/a>. “The char is returned to the field as a soil additive, and the bio-oil is pumped underground as a permanent carbon-removal technology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://charmindustrial.com/registry\">Charm has sequestered some 6,000 tons of carbon since 2020\u003c/a>, when Kinetic, who has a background in aerospace engineering, first invented the bio-oil sequestration technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Customers now include major tech companies like Stripe, Shopify and Microsoft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yes, Shaun’s last name really is Kinetic, which he and his wife, Kelly, one of the company’s four founders, adopted when they married a few years ago. The couple left Charm in February 2023 for reasons the company did not disclose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company uses physical equipment and even old, abandoned oil wells to send the bio-oil underground — one of the many approaches in the burgeoning field of carbon removal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982064\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982064 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\" alt='A short, squat glass bottle with a large, twist-on, bright blue plastic top, half-filled with a dark brown liquid. A rectangular white card sits upright in a gold-colored holder, with \"Bio-oil Pathfinder/July 2021\" hand-printed in black ink. A second, similar bottle sits to the left, with its own hand-printed sign, and two jars that appear to be partly filled with dirt sit behind it. Beyond all this, on what looks to be the back of a shelf, is a photograph of what appears to be rolling, brown hills.' width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63882_003_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sample of the bio-oil Charm Industrial produces (center), on display at the company’s facility in San Francisco on March 28, 2023. ‘It’s carbon, embodied,’ says co-founder Shaun Kinetic. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Charm frequently hires former fossil-fuel industry workers to orchestrate the process, as they are often the ones most familiar with the equipment involved.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A local job creator?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-11/2022-sp.pdf\">For California to meet its ambitious climate goals, which include becoming carbon-neutral by 2045 (PDF)\u003c/a>, the state will need to capture or remove about \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-11/2022-sp.pdf\">100 million tons of carbon dioxide (PDF)\u003c/a> each year, roughly equivalent to \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-11/2022-sp.pdf\">the pollution created by 250 gas-power plants (PDF)\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike \u003ca href=\"https://www.c2es.org/content/carbon-capture/\">carbon capture\u003c/a>, which involves trapping polluting greenhouse gasses at their source of emissions, carbon removal entails pulling the gas out of the atmosphere through either nature-based approaches, like conserving existing wetlands, or technological methods, like the one used by Charm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And local and state lawmakers are increasingly showing interest in supporting those efforts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Decades ago, San Francisco and the Bay Area were home to the explosion of the information technology sector,” said Assemblymember Matt Haney, a San Francisco Democrat. “It started small and then it grew to transform the world. We want to have the Bay Area be the similar home for carbon capture and carbon removal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doing so, he added, could also create a lot of jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982066\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982066 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A young white man with short blond hair, wearing jeans and a puffy jacket in stripes of blue, gray and gold, stands in front of a stack of hay bales. He holds an amber-colored cob in his right hand and looks down at it, smiling, while his left hand rests in his pocket.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63889_008_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Peter Reinhardt, another Charm Industrial co-founder, explains the process of removing carbon from the large bales of corn stalks, leaves and cobs that get delivered to the company’s San Francisco facility. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s not just folks who can do the engineering and the technology, the financing, but we actually need skilled industrial labor,” Haney said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat from Irvine, said California could become a hub for this kind of work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want those innovators to come to California. I want them to grow their businesses here,” Petrie-Norris said. “I think that there’s a lot of work that we need to do as policymakers to create a foundation and to create the right incentives to bring them here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pulling carbon out of the atmosphere\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>To avoid exacerbating an already catastrophic climate crisis, humans need to first and foremost stop putting planet-warming gasses into the air. But there is also an urgent need to draw down an enormous amount of the carbon pollution that has already been created.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "Related Stories ",
"tag": "climate"
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/\">recent international climate report\u003c/a> went as far as to call carbon removal an “unavoidable” strategy if countries are to meet their emissions-reduction goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Carbon removal refers to things you can do, whether it involves nature-based systems or technologies and engineered systems to literally pull CO2 out of the atmosphere,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.ghgpolicy.org/\">Danny Cullenward\u003c/a>, a research fellow with the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy at American University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cullenward notes that the world’s forests and oceans are actively pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through a natural carbon cycle, independent of human involvement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The problem is, if we don’t intervene in these systems, they won’t suck up enough because we’ve put such an unfathomably large quantity of pollution in the atmosphere in the first place,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all interventions are created equal. Lots of \u003ca href=\"https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2022/11/17/carbon-credits-flights-claim-offset-emissions-do-they-work/10707844002/\">carbon offsets, often including those offered as add-ons during plane ticket bookings\u003c/a>, go toward established projects that are already underway. Directing more money toward them doesn’t always translate directly into more carbon removal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alternatively, with projects like Charm’s, the more money invested, the more carbon removed, a business model that Cullenward argues is ultimately more effective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He also notes it’s important to consider the amount of time the carbon will stay sequestered, and out of the atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we burn fossil fuels, about three-quarters, 80%, of the CO2 we burn stays in the atmosphere for something on the order of 200 to thousands of years,” Cullenward said. “The remainder stays put through geologic time. It’s essentially permanent.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982065\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982065 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A large white machine with various pipes and container sits on a flatbed truck. Behind it, a sign reads, 'Charm Industrial.'\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63888_010_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Charm Industrial’s pyrolyzer, which turns agricultural waste into the carbon-concentrated bio-oil product. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Cullenward says some carbon-removal strategies will sequester carbon in a forest for a period of decades, which can be good, and is better than nothing. But other carbon-removal strategies, like those storing carbon deep underground in wells and geological formations, have the potential to contain it there for thousands of years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s one of the reasons he thinks Charm’s approach is a good one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The injection wells are pretty close to a forever solution from the standpoint of the time duration of carbon storage,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Fear of ‘unintended consequences’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Katie Valenzuela, senior policy advocate with the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition, and a Sacramento City Council member, describes herself as a “front-line kid who grew up in Kern County,” where most of California’s oil is drilled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because of its unique geology, \u003ca href=\"https://gs.llnl.gov/sites/gs/files/2021-08/getting_to_neutral.pdf\">the Central Valley has also been identified as a “highly suitable” place to store carbon (PDF)\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every time we have this great new idea that we want to test out, it lands in the Central Valley somehow, and ends up having unintended consequences that weren’t foreseen, that then we have to deal with,” Valenzuela said. “The safety and health impacts of how you transport this stuff, where it is stored, how it is used, carry real consequences for our communities and are going to be targeting the types of communities that have already borne the brunt of things like oil extraction for decades.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1982070\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1982070 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A young white-presenting man with dark brown hair, a dark moustache, and slight beard, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a black zip-up jacket, holds two parts of the same sort of hose, as if he might be coupling or uncoupling them. He stands in what seems to be a very large, brightly lit warehouse, with things like a rolling whiteboard, a fire extinguisher, and tables in the background.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/RS63891_012_KQED_CharmIndustrial_03282023-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Andrew Radbel, a mechanical engineer at Charm Industrial, repairs a cyclone test skid, a machine that tests particulate filtration before material is put in the carbon-removing pyrolyzer. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Valenzuela is fine with carbon removal in theory, but worries it will allow oil and gas companies to hide behind new technologies and continue drilling and polluting her home. She notes the process is important, but it doesn’t ameliorate the existing pollution from heavy industry that directly impacts the health of her community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I wish that we could take care of the communities who need it the most first, and then explore the other thing that we know we need to do,” Valenzuela said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘We need to get to work’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Sarah Baker, a chemist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was a lead author of \u003ca href=\"https://livermorelabfoundation.org/2019/12/19/getting-to-neutral/\">a 2020 report laying out California’s potential path for getting to zero emissions by 2045\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She still thinks that goal is within reach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s building a lot of equipment and infrastructure and moving biomass and moving CO2, but we can do it with technologies that exist today,” Baker told state lawmakers during a presentation earlier this year. “This is not magic, we don’t need multiple miracles. We need to get to work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Charm co-founder Shaun Kinetic feels similarly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It effectively needs to be a wartime effort,” he said. “The oil and gas infrastructure that currently exists out to the horizon needs to be replaced with carbon removal.”\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/science/1982049/could-carbon-removal-be-californias-next-big-boom-industry",
"authors": [
"8648"
],
"categories": [
"science_31",
"science_40",
"science_4450"
],
"tags": [
"science_2856",
"science_194",
"science_4417",
"science_4414",
"science_306"
],
"featImg": "science_1982075",
"label": "science"
},
"science_1981943": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "science_1981943",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1981943",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1679593948000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1679593948,
"format": "standard",
"title": "3 Reasons Why California's Drought Isn't Really Over, Despite All the Rain",
"headTitle": "3 Reasons Why California’s Drought Isn’t Really Over, Despite All the Rain | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Ask a water expert if California’s drought is finally done, and the answers sound something like this:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes and no.” “Kind of.” “Depends what you mean by drought.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state has been deluged by storms this winter, hit by 12 atmospheric rivers that have led to evacuation orders, rising rivers and broken levees. In some parts of the Sierra Nevada, more than \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/UCB_CSSL/status/1637893296411508736?s=20\">55 feet of snow\u003c/a> have fallen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With reservoirs filling up, many Californians are eager to put the severe, 3-year drought behind them. A major water supplier in Southern California recently \u003ca href=\"https://www.mwdh2o.com/press-releases/metropolitan-board-rescinds-emergency-conservation-mandate-imposed-on-dozens-of-communities\">lifted mandatory conservation rules\u003c/a> that limited outdoor watering. Large parts of the state are now free of drought, according to the federal government’s \u003ca href=\"https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA\">Drought Monitor\u003c/a>, which looks at rainfall and soil moisture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in California, water shortages aren’t just due to a lack of rain, and the state’s chronic water problems are far from over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While we’ve seen some pretty fantastic wet weather and we’ve seen conditions improve, in a whole lot of places we still have some lingering impacts that still challenge California,” says Mike Anderson, the state’s climatologist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Decades of drought have taken their toll, and experts say that deeper issues need to be addressed before California can be fully-drought free. Here are three reasons why:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>#1 – California’s groundwater drought is still bad\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When California’s reservoirs declined, many cities and farmers turned to another water source: vast aquifers underground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In drought years, groundwater has supplied up to 60% of California’s water. But the pumping has been largely unregulated. So over the decades, water levels have fallen dramatically in California’s aquifers. Before this winter, some groundwater wells were at the lowest points ever recorded. That’s because in the Central Valley, groundwater \u003ca href=\"https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021WR030352\">hasn’t been replenished after previous droughts\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Groundwater is the dark matter of the hydrologic cycle,” says Graham Fogg, professor emeritus of hydrogeology at the University of California Davis. “The fact that these are such huge volumes of water allows them to take a lot of abuse and to be depleted year after year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1981945\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1981945\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-800x579.jpg\" alt=\"Flooded water on agricultural land.\" width=\"800\" height=\"579\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-800x579.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-1020x738.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-160x116.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-768x555.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-1536x1111.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-2048x1481.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-1920x1389.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Floodwater in Fresno County, Calif., is diverted onto agricultural land, so it can seep into underground aquifers. Groundwater levels have fallen dramatically during the state’s droughts. \u003ccite>(Andrew Innerarity/California Department of Water Resources)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As a result, more than 2,000 household wells went dry over the last three years in California, many in low-income communities of color. Temporary water supplies, including bottled water, had to be brought in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not out of a drought,” says Susana De Anda, executive director of the Community Water Center, an environmental justice organization in the Central Valley. “In California, the human right to water was passed in 2012. Unfortunately to this day, many Californians don’t have that reality, and it’s important to recognize that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This winter, a new effort is underway to use some of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/10/05/1037370430/water-is-scarce-in-california-but-farmers-have-found-ways-to-store-it-undergroun\">floodwaters to fill aquifers\u003c/a>. California is also in the process of implementing a new groundwater law, intended to get over-pumping under control. Water users are currently writing plans for keeping groundwater use in balance with supply, but they won’t be fully implemented until 2040.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Over the years, pretty consistently, California has been using a lot more water than its surface water and groundwater system can supply,” Fogg says. “So that has to change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>#2 – California’s other water source is still in drought\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Most of California’s major cities exist today because their water is delivered from hundreds of miles away. In Southern California, that distance is thousands of miles, because the region uses water from the Colorado River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A two-decades long drought has hit the Colorado River hard, causing its massive \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/01/07/1067716380/western-megadrought-climate-lake-powell-glen-canyon-reservoir\">reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, to plummet\u003c/a>. Climate change is \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1003424717/the-drought-in-the-western-u-s-is-getting-bad-climate-change-is-making-it-worse\">shrinking the snowpack\u003c/a> that feeds the river, and the seven states that use it have long made claim to more water than is available on average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1981946\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1981946\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"A drone provides a view of an excavator placing large rocks to close a levee break caused by flood waters from the Pajaro River near the township of Pajaro in Monterey County, California. \" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-2048x1367.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-1920x1282.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Heavy storms caused a levee to break in Pajaro, Calif., flooding nearby homes. The parade of winter storms has tested the state’s infrastructure. \u003ccite>(Ken James/California Department of Water Resources)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those states are now in emergency negotiations over cutbacks to their water supply, but are \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/08/27/1119550028/7-states-and-federal-government-lack-direction-on-cutbacks-from-the-colorado-riv\">struggling to agree\u003c/a>. With some of the oldest water rights on the river, California has seniority and is technically last in line for cuts. But its water supply will still be impacted. Many Southern California cities have been \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/recycled-sewage-water-southern-california\">working on conserving and recycling\u003c/a> water locally, so they’re less dependent on faraway supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We just have to get better at managing the more limited resources that we have there, and that means figuring out how to share a smaller pool of water than what we’ve been using up till now,” says Ellen Hanak, director of the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>#3 – The next drought is coming…\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Cue \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/837403-during-the-dry-years-the-people-forgot-about-the-rich\">the John Steinbeck quote\u003c/a> – it’s easy to forget about the dry times once the rains come. But drought will return.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We always have to be ready,” Hanak says. “Drier times could come again as soon as next year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the climate gets hotter, California’s extremes \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1003424717/the-drought-in-the-western-u-s-is-getting-bad-climate-change-is-making-it-worse\">are expected to get more extreme\u003c/a>. That means droughts will be drier, putting even greater strain on the state’s water supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the last major drought ended in California in 2017, some \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/blog/are-californias-cities-conserving-enough-water/\">water conservation behavior seemed to stick\u003c/a>. Water use didn’t rebound to pre-drought levels, because some residents made lasting changes, like replacing water-hungry lawns and swapping for more efficient fixtures and appliances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, experts warn that keeping a drought-mindset can only help California weather future challenges. So there’s a risk in acting like drought is a thing of the past. Saving water now could help keep reservoirs fuller, a safe bet in a state where next year’s winter storms are never guaranteed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=3+reasons+why+California%27s+drought+isn%27t+really+over%2C+despite+all+the+rain&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 1061,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 24
},
"modified": 1704846071,
"excerpt": "California has been deluged by storms this winter, but fixing the state's severe drought will take more than rain; the state has deeper problems in how it uses water.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "California has been deluged by storms this winter, but fixing the state's severe drought will take more than rain; the state has deeper problems in how it uses water.",
"title": "3 Reasons Why California's Drought Isn't Really Over, Despite All the Rain | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "3 Reasons Why California's Drought Isn't Really Over, Despite All the Rain",
"datePublished": "2023-03-23T10:52:28-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-09T16:21:11-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "3-reasons-why-californias-drought-isnt-really-over-despite-all-the-rain",
"status": "publish",
"nprApiLink": "http://api.npr.org/query?id=1165378214&apiKey=MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004",
"nprStoryDate": "Thu, 23 Mar 2023 05:03:34 -0400",
"excludeFromSiteSearch": "Include",
"nprLastModifiedDate": "Thu, 23 Mar 2023 05:03:34 -0400",
"nprHtmlLink": "https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165378214/3-reasons-why-californias-drought-isnt-really-over-despite-all-the-rain?ft=nprml&f=1165378214",
"nprAudio": "https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2023/03/20230323_me_3_reasons_why_californias_drought_isnt_really_over_despite_all_the_rain.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1167&d=203&p=3&story=1165378214&ft=nprml&f=1165378214",
"nprImageAgency": "California Department of Water Resources",
"source": "NPR",
"nprAudioM3u": "http://api.npr.org/m3u/11165527303-a2bcdf.m3u?orgId=1&topicId=1167&d=203&p=3&story=1165378214&ft=nprml&f=1165378214",
"nprStoryId": "1165378214",
"nprByline": "\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/803934365/lauren-sommer\">Lauren Sommer\u003c/a>",
"sticky": false,
"nprImageCredit": "Ken James",
"showOnAuthorArchivePages": "No",
"articleAge": "0",
"nprRetrievedStory": "1",
"nprPubDate": "Thu, 23 Mar 2023 08:20:00 -0400",
"path": "/science/1981943/3-reasons-why-californias-drought-isnt-really-over-despite-all-the-rain",
"audioUrl": "https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2023/03/20230323_me_3_reasons_why_californias_drought_isnt_really_over_despite_all_the_rain.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1167&d=203&p=3&story=1165378214&ft=nprml&f=1165378214",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Ask a water expert if California’s drought is finally done, and the answers sound something like this:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes and no.” “Kind of.” “Depends what you mean by drought.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state has been deluged by storms this winter, hit by 12 atmospheric rivers that have led to evacuation orders, rising rivers and broken levees. In some parts of the Sierra Nevada, more than \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/UCB_CSSL/status/1637893296411508736?s=20\">55 feet of snow\u003c/a> have fallen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With reservoirs filling up, many Californians are eager to put the severe, 3-year drought behind them. A major water supplier in Southern California recently \u003ca href=\"https://www.mwdh2o.com/press-releases/metropolitan-board-rescinds-emergency-conservation-mandate-imposed-on-dozens-of-communities\">lifted mandatory conservation rules\u003c/a> that limited outdoor watering. Large parts of the state are now free of drought, according to the federal government’s \u003ca href=\"https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA\">Drought Monitor\u003c/a>, which looks at rainfall and soil moisture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in California, water shortages aren’t just due to a lack of rain, and the state’s chronic water problems are far from over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While we’ve seen some pretty fantastic wet weather and we’ve seen conditions improve, in a whole lot of places we still have some lingering impacts that still challenge California,” says Mike Anderson, the state’s climatologist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Decades of drought have taken their toll, and experts say that deeper issues need to be addressed before California can be fully-drought free. Here are three reasons why:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>#1 – California’s groundwater drought is still bad\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When California’s reservoirs declined, many cities and farmers turned to another water source: vast aquifers underground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In drought years, groundwater has supplied up to 60% of California’s water. But the pumping has been largely unregulated. So over the decades, water levels have fallen dramatically in California’s aquifers. Before this winter, some groundwater wells were at the lowest points ever recorded. That’s because in the Central Valley, groundwater \u003ca href=\"https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021WR030352\">hasn’t been replenished after previous droughts\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Groundwater is the dark matter of the hydrologic cycle,” says Graham Fogg, professor emeritus of hydrogeology at the University of California Davis. “The fact that these are such huge volumes of water allows them to take a lot of abuse and to be depleted year after year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1981945\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1981945\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-800x579.jpg\" alt=\"Flooded water on agricultural land.\" width=\"800\" height=\"579\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-800x579.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-1020x738.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-160x116.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-768x555.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-1536x1111.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-2048x1481.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_13_ai_0432_groundwater_recharge_custom-5349d6e5a724fbfe9e15e34b9b5b1e618be5cedb-1920x1389.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Floodwater in Fresno County, Calif., is diverted onto agricultural land, so it can seep into underground aquifers. Groundwater levels have fallen dramatically during the state’s droughts. \u003ccite>(Andrew Innerarity/California Department of Water Resources)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As a result, more than 2,000 household wells went dry over the last three years in California, many in low-income communities of color. Temporary water supplies, including bottled water, had to be brought in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not out of a drought,” says Susana De Anda, executive director of the Community Water Center, an environmental justice organization in the Central Valley. “In California, the human right to water was passed in 2012. Unfortunately to this day, many Californians don’t have that reality, and it’s important to recognize that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This winter, a new effort is underway to use some of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/10/05/1037370430/water-is-scarce-in-california-but-farmers-have-found-ways-to-store-it-undergroun\">floodwaters to fill aquifers\u003c/a>. California is also in the process of implementing a new groundwater law, intended to get over-pumping under control. Water users are currently writing plans for keeping groundwater use in balance with supply, but they won’t be fully implemented until 2040.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Over the years, pretty consistently, California has been using a lot more water than its surface water and groundwater system can supply,” Fogg says. “So that has to change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>#2 – California’s other water source is still in drought\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Most of California’s major cities exist today because their water is delivered from hundreds of miles away. In Southern California, that distance is thousands of miles, because the region uses water from the Colorado River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A two-decades long drought has hit the Colorado River hard, causing its massive \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/01/07/1067716380/western-megadrought-climate-lake-powell-glen-canyon-reservoir\">reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, to plummet\u003c/a>. Climate change is \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1003424717/the-drought-in-the-western-u-s-is-getting-bad-climate-change-is-making-it-worse\">shrinking the snowpack\u003c/a> that feeds the river, and the seven states that use it have long made claim to more water than is available on average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1981946\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1981946\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-800x534.jpg\" alt=\"A drone provides a view of an excavator placing large rocks to close a levee break caused by flood waters from the Pajaro River near the township of Pajaro in Monterey County, California. \" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-2048x1367.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/2023_03_12_kj_0127_pajaro_levee_break_drone_custom-e21092fb295c9262bda0d149683b5b49a90cb4e0-1920x1282.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Heavy storms caused a levee to break in Pajaro, Calif., flooding nearby homes. The parade of winter storms has tested the state’s infrastructure. \u003ccite>(Ken James/California Department of Water Resources)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those states are now in emergency negotiations over cutbacks to their water supply, but are \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/08/27/1119550028/7-states-and-federal-government-lack-direction-on-cutbacks-from-the-colorado-riv\">struggling to agree\u003c/a>. With some of the oldest water rights on the river, California has seniority and is technically last in line for cuts. But its water supply will still be impacted. Many Southern California cities have been \u003ca href=\"https://laist.com/news/climate-environment/recycled-sewage-water-southern-california\">working on conserving and recycling\u003c/a> water locally, so they’re less dependent on faraway supplies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We just have to get better at managing the more limited resources that we have there, and that means figuring out how to share a smaller pool of water than what we’ve been using up till now,” says Ellen Hanak, director of the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>#3 – The next drought is coming…\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Cue \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/837403-during-the-dry-years-the-people-forgot-about-the-rich\">the John Steinbeck quote\u003c/a> – it’s easy to forget about the dry times once the rains come. But drought will return.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We always have to be ready,” Hanak says. “Drier times could come again as soon as next year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the climate gets hotter, California’s extremes \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1003424717/the-drought-in-the-western-u-s-is-getting-bad-climate-change-is-making-it-worse\">are expected to get more extreme\u003c/a>. That means droughts will be drier, putting even greater strain on the state’s water supply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the last major drought ended in California in 2017, some \u003ca href=\"https://www.ppic.org/blog/are-californias-cities-conserving-enough-water/\">water conservation behavior seemed to stick\u003c/a>. Water use didn’t rebound to pre-drought levels, because some residents made lasting changes, like replacing water-hungry lawns and swapping for more efficient fixtures and appliances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, experts warn that keeping a drought-mindset can only help California weather future challenges. So there’s a risk in acting like drought is a thing of the past. Saving water now could help keep reservoirs fuller, a safe bet in a state where next year’s winter storms are never guaranteed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=3+reasons+why+California%27s+drought+isn%27t+really+over%2C+despite+all+the+rain&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/science/1981943/3-reasons-why-californias-drought-isnt-really-over-despite-all-the-rain",
"authors": [
"byline_science_1981943"
],
"categories": [
"science_31",
"science_40",
"science_4450",
"science_98"
],
"tags": [
"science_2227",
"science_194",
"science_572"
],
"featImg": "science_1981944",
"label": "source_science_1981943"
},
"science_1981790": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "science_1981790",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1981790",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1677765655000
]
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "california-legislature-reviews-toxic-waste-disposal",
"title": "California Keeps Sending Toxic Soil to Out-of-State Landfills — Newsom and Legislators Are Slow to Change Course",
"publishDate": 1677765655,
"format": "standard",
"headTitle": "California Keeps Sending Toxic Soil to Out-of-State Landfills — Newsom and Legislators Are Slow to Change Course | KQED",
"labelTerm": {},
"content": "\u003cp>State lawmakers are planning an oversight hearing that will look into how California handles toxic soil from old industrial, military and other cleanup sites — waste contaminated with things such as lead, petroleum hydrocarbons and the infamous insecticide DDT.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/01/california-toxic-waste-dumped-arizona-utah/\">CalMatters investigation\u003c/a> last month revealed businesses and government agencies routinely dispose of contaminated soil at landfills in Arizona and Utah — states with weaker environmental regulation and oversight — as opposed to in California, where the waste would need to go to specialized hazardous waste disposal facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two of the most heavily used landfills are near Native American reservations in Arizona, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23571798-20211001-consent_order_syclf_final-signed\">one landfill with a spotty environmental record\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California state and local government agencies largely oversee or directly manage the cleanup projects disposing the waste out of state. California’s own hazardous waste watchdog — the Department of Toxic Substances Control — is one of the biggest out-of-state dumpers and has continued to take its toxic waste to Arizona despite the public revelations, according to information the department recently provided.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom has positioned himself as a national leader on environmental issues. His office failed to respond to requests for comment both before and after CalMatters’ initial report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The as-yet unscheduled hearing had been planned to explore various hazardous waste issues, but the chair of the state Senate’s Environmental Quality Committee said it will now also probe the out-of-state dumping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a real concern,” said Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat from Redondo Beach. “I think at a gut level, everybody feels as though every state should be handling its own toxic waste and not sending it across borders to other states and countries with less stringent environmental standards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CalMatters’ reporting revealed that California businesses and government agencies have disposed of more than 660,000 tons of toxic soil in Arizona landfills since 2018 and nearly a million tons at a Utah landfill, according to data from the state’s hazardous waste tracking system. That includes more than 105,000 tons from the state’s cleanup of lead-contaminated soil in the neighborhoods around the old Exide battery recycling facility in Los Angeles County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The out-of-state landfills are a cheaper option than California’s two hazardous waste disposal facilities, which are in Kings and Kern counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Department of Toxic Substances Control took most of the Exide residential cleanup waste to the South Yuma County Landfill, which Arizona environmental regulators in 2021 labeled as posing an “\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23571796-20210430-south-yuma-county-landfill-inspection-report#document/p25/a2194981\">imminent and substantial threat\u003c/a>” after an inspection noted windblown litter, large amounts of “disease vectors” (flies and birds), and groundwater with elevated levels of chromium — a metal that can harm people and the environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The landfill made fixes to resolve those and other violations, according to Arizona regulators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exide waste has continued to go to that state. The Department of Toxic Substances Control shipped 52 loads of hazardous waste from the Exide residential cleanup to the Yuma landfill from Jan. 25 to Feb. 10, according to figures the department provided.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Arizona, one lawmaker told CalMatters that she wasn’t aware California was dumping so much hazardous waste in her state’s landfills and called it “very concerning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Arizona is not a dumping ground and hauling California’s hazardous waste so close to Arizona’s agricultural hub and the Colorado River is asking for trouble no matter how many precautions they take,” said Arizona state Rep. Mariana Sandoval, a Democrat whose district includes areas around the South Yuma County Landfill. “I would hope that our new governor will take a close look at this … and encourage California to find landfills in their own state for their own waste.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>New plan coming for California toxic waste\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>As to whether Californians can expect any major policy change, officials largely pointed to a 2021 law requiring the state to craft a new \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/hazardous-waste-management-plan/\">hazardous waste management plan\u003c/a>. As part of the process, the Department of Toxic Substances Control is scheduled to release a report in March looking at how much hazardous waste the state is generating and how it’s being handled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The (Hazardous Waste Management) Plan will propose strategies for reducing hazardous waste generation, managing more waste in state, and addressing issues of concern, such as hazardous waste impacts to disadvantaged communities,” according to a statement from the department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A proposed plan isn’t due until spring 2025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked how the state can justify continuing to dump hazardous waste in out-of-state landfills next to Native American reservations, California’s secretary for environmental protection, Yana Garcia, declined an interview request but provided a written statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The hazardous waste challenges we face across the country are decades in the making. While we know these issues won’t be resolved overnight, California is fully committed to addressing this urgently, and we are prioritizing investing in the search for solutions to do so,” according to her statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the bill that led to the hazardous waste planning process as well as more stable funding for the department “improved our ability to address this and other toxic waste challenges. Enhancing DTSC’s regulatory oversight and requiring the research and public engagement necessary to come to consensus on solutions moves us in the right direction, but our path to achieve on-the-ground improvements will require true partnership with a multitude of stakeholders and a fundamental shift in how we produce, treat, and handle hazardous waste, across the board.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Hazardous waste landfills in San Joaquin Valley\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Regulators, environmental advocates and lawmakers said the issue is complicated and any solution is likely to be controversial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is limited in its ability to regulate interstate commerce. State regulators said there’s not much they can do to stop private entities from taking waste across the border.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And California has only two hazardous waste landfills, both of them in the San Joaquin Valley: the \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/kettleman-hills-facility/\">Kettleman Hills Facility\u003c/a> in Kings County and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.envirostor.dtsc.ca.gov/public/hwmp_profile_report?global_id=CAD980675276\">Buttonwillow landfill facility\u003c/a> in Kern County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On paper, the sites appear to have enough space to take contaminated soil. Last year, Jennifer Andrews, a spokesperson for WM (formerly known as Waste Management Inc.), which operates the \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/kettleman-hills-facility/\">Kettleman Hills Facility\u003c/a>, told CalMatters the site “has enough capacity to meet the State of California’s hazardous waste disposal needs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We also have plenty of space to meet the needs of (Department of Toxic Substances Control) waste for years to come, providing the agency permits new disposal units at our site.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the two landfills have been controversial. Both were the subject of numerous regulatory violations over the years and advocates have long protested about the sites, which are near communities of color. In 2014 the Department of Toxic Substances Control approved \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2017/03/KettlemanCommunityflyerEnglish512.pdf\">an expansion at Kettleman Hills (PDF)\u003c/a>, prompting environmental justice and community groups to file a civil rights complaint, records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation='Bradley Angel, executive director, Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice']‘They need some other alternatives, and the reality is I don’t see them building another hazardous waste landfill.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradley Angel is executive director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, one of the groups that filed the complaint, which ultimately led to a \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/2016/08/10/landmark-agreement-reached-to-benefit-environmental-justice-communities-and-resolve-a-civil-rights-complaint-on-hazardous-waste-permitting-decision/\">settlement agreement\u003c/a> including provisions for more health assessment and environmental monitoring, state records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They need some other alternatives, and the reality is I don’t see them building another hazardous waste landfill,” Angel said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said there’s “not the political appetite.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, the Department of Toxic Substances Control appeared to acknowledge as much in a \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2021/05/FINAL-CPHWRI-REPORT_ADA_FINAL.pdf?emrc=0e9fe7\">2017 report that looked at ways to reduce hazardous waste\u003c/a>, including treating more contaminated soil on-site as opposed to excavating it. The report cited a “difficulty in gaining consensus in the siting of new facilities” as leading to a focus on strategies to reduce the amount of hazardous waste generated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, if you can’t build more sites to take hazardous waste because nobody wants it in their backyard, then you better figure out a way to make less of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Cleaning up hazardous soil\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California’s efforts to address a long history of environmental harm at old industrial and military installations produces hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic soil each year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Department of Toxic Substances Control “is trying to remediate contamination that was created over decades by unscrupulous private sector actors. Now, does that mean they ought to be dumping in Arizona?” Allen, the Democrat from Redondo Beach, asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The senator said his committee will hold an oversight hearing on the Department of Toxic Substances Control sometime this year. Other topics will likely include recent reporting from \u003cem>The Los Angeles Times\u003c/em> suggesting the state isn’t ensuring properties around the Exide facility are properly \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-10/exide-lead-cleanup-leaves-fear-and-frustration-in-its-wake\">cleaned of lead-contaminated soil\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s not an easy answer here. But that doesn’t mean that we accept the status quo,” Allen said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1981792\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1981792 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-La-Paz-County-AZ-MG-CM-06-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A landscape of beige, sandy soil and green scrub across it, with a rise the same color as the sand in the distance.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-La-Paz-County-AZ-MG-CM-06-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-La-Paz-County-AZ-MG-CM-06-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-La-Paz-County-AZ-MG-CM-06-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-La-Paz-County-AZ-MG-CM-06-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-La-Paz-County-AZ-MG-CM-06.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The La Paz County Regional Landfill near the Colorado River Indian Tribes reservation in Arizona on Nov. 29, 2022. \u003ccite>(Miguel Gutierrez Jr./CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Other states could, of course, also take action. Oregon in the late 1980s adopted a rule that effectively bars California from dumping hazardous waste in that state’s regular landfills. Nevada has a similar rule. (California disposed of a large amount of contaminated soil at a Nevada facility in recent years, shipping records show. But that site is designed and permitted to handle hazardous waste.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sandoval, the lawmaker whose district includes an area around the South Yuma landfill, said Arizona legislation to restrict California’s dumping is possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nobody wants that in their backyard,” Sandoval said. “Obviously California doesn’t want it in their backyard. That’s why they’re bringing it over to us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Utah legislators CalMatters reached out to didn’t respond to requests for comment. Regulators in that state recently signified their intent to deny a permit for a landfill on the banks of the Great Salt Lake that CalMatters reported was planning to take California’s contaminated soil. CalMatters reported in January that the company behind the project filed an economic analysis with its state regulators calling the toxic soil a “unique market opportunity created by California law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://documents.deq.utah.gov/waste-management-and-radiation-control/facilities/promontory-point-landfill/DSHW-2023-001251.pdf\">proposed permit denial\u003c/a> indicates there is already enough landfill capacity to handle Utah’s waste needs.\u003c/p>\n\n",
"blocks": [],
"excerpt": "California sends toxic soil to landfills in Utah and Arizona, including sites near Native American reservations. Will lawmakers step in to keep the waste in state?",
"status": "publish",
"parent": 0,
"modified": 1725576840,
"stats": {
"hasAudio": false,
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"paragraphCount": 43,
"wordCount": 1796
},
"headData": {
"title": "California Keeps Sending Toxic Soil to Out-of-State Landfills — Newsom and Legislators Are Slow to Change Course | KQED",
"description": "California sends toxic soil to landfills in Utah and Arizona, including sites near Native American reservations. Will lawmakers step in to keep the waste in state?",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogDescription": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"twDescription": "",
"twImgId": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "California Keeps Sending Toxic Soil to Out-of-State Landfills — Newsom and Legislators Are Slow to Change Course",
"datePublished": "2023-03-02T06:00:55-08:00",
"dateModified": "2024-09-05T15:54:00-07:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"source": "Calmatters",
"sticky": false,
"nprByline": "\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/author/robert-lewis/\">Robert Lewis\u003c/a>",
"excludeFromSiteSearch": "Include",
"showOnAuthorArchivePages": "No",
"articleAge": "0",
"path": "/science/1981790/california-legislature-reviews-toxic-waste-disposal",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>State lawmakers are planning an oversight hearing that will look into how California handles toxic soil from old industrial, military and other cleanup sites — waste contaminated with things such as lead, petroleum hydrocarbons and the infamous insecticide DDT.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/01/california-toxic-waste-dumped-arizona-utah/\">CalMatters investigation\u003c/a> last month revealed businesses and government agencies routinely dispose of contaminated soil at landfills in Arizona and Utah — states with weaker environmental regulation and oversight — as opposed to in California, where the waste would need to go to specialized hazardous waste disposal facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two of the most heavily used landfills are near Native American reservations in Arizona, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23571798-20211001-consent_order_syclf_final-signed\">one landfill with a spotty environmental record\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California state and local government agencies largely oversee or directly manage the cleanup projects disposing the waste out of state. California’s own hazardous waste watchdog — the Department of Toxic Substances Control — is one of the biggest out-of-state dumpers and has continued to take its toxic waste to Arizona despite the public revelations, according to information the department recently provided.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom has positioned himself as a national leader on environmental issues. His office failed to respond to requests for comment both before and after CalMatters’ initial report.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The as-yet unscheduled hearing had been planned to explore various hazardous waste issues, but the chair of the state Senate’s Environmental Quality Committee said it will now also probe the out-of-state dumping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a real concern,” said Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat from Redondo Beach. “I think at a gut level, everybody feels as though every state should be handling its own toxic waste and not sending it across borders to other states and countries with less stringent environmental standards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CalMatters’ reporting revealed that California businesses and government agencies have disposed of more than 660,000 tons of toxic soil in Arizona landfills since 2018 and nearly a million tons at a Utah landfill, according to data from the state’s hazardous waste tracking system. That includes more than 105,000 tons from the state’s cleanup of lead-contaminated soil in the neighborhoods around the old Exide battery recycling facility in Los Angeles County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The out-of-state landfills are a cheaper option than California’s two hazardous waste disposal facilities, which are in Kings and Kern counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Department of Toxic Substances Control took most of the Exide residential cleanup waste to the South Yuma County Landfill, which Arizona environmental regulators in 2021 labeled as posing an “\u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23571796-20210430-south-yuma-county-landfill-inspection-report#document/p25/a2194981\">imminent and substantial threat\u003c/a>” after an inspection noted windblown litter, large amounts of “disease vectors” (flies and birds), and groundwater with elevated levels of chromium — a metal that can harm people and the environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The landfill made fixes to resolve those and other violations, according to Arizona regulators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exide waste has continued to go to that state. The Department of Toxic Substances Control shipped 52 loads of hazardous waste from the Exide residential cleanup to the Yuma landfill from Jan. 25 to Feb. 10, according to figures the department provided.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Arizona, one lawmaker told CalMatters that she wasn’t aware California was dumping so much hazardous waste in her state’s landfills and called it “very concerning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Arizona is not a dumping ground and hauling California’s hazardous waste so close to Arizona’s agricultural hub and the Colorado River is asking for trouble no matter how many precautions they take,” said Arizona state Rep. Mariana Sandoval, a Democrat whose district includes areas around the South Yuma County Landfill. “I would hope that our new governor will take a close look at this … and encourage California to find landfills in their own state for their own waste.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>New plan coming for California toxic waste\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>As to whether Californians can expect any major policy change, officials largely pointed to a 2021 law requiring the state to craft a new \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/hazardous-waste-management-plan/\">hazardous waste management plan\u003c/a>. As part of the process, the Department of Toxic Substances Control is scheduled to release a report in March looking at how much hazardous waste the state is generating and how it’s being handled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The (Hazardous Waste Management) Plan will propose strategies for reducing hazardous waste generation, managing more waste in state, and addressing issues of concern, such as hazardous waste impacts to disadvantaged communities,” according to a statement from the department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A proposed plan isn’t due until spring 2025.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked how the state can justify continuing to dump hazardous waste in out-of-state landfills next to Native American reservations, California’s secretary for environmental protection, Yana Garcia, declined an interview request but provided a written statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The hazardous waste challenges we face across the country are decades in the making. While we know these issues won’t be resolved overnight, California is fully committed to addressing this urgently, and we are prioritizing investing in the search for solutions to do so,” according to her statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said the bill that led to the hazardous waste planning process as well as more stable funding for the department “improved our ability to address this and other toxic waste challenges. Enhancing DTSC’s regulatory oversight and requiring the research and public engagement necessary to come to consensus on solutions moves us in the right direction, but our path to achieve on-the-ground improvements will require true partnership with a multitude of stakeholders and a fundamental shift in how we produce, treat, and handle hazardous waste, across the board.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Hazardous waste landfills in San Joaquin Valley\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Regulators, environmental advocates and lawmakers said the issue is complicated and any solution is likely to be controversial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is limited in its ability to regulate interstate commerce. State regulators said there’s not much they can do to stop private entities from taking waste across the border.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And California has only two hazardous waste landfills, both of them in the San Joaquin Valley: the \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/kettleman-hills-facility/\">Kettleman Hills Facility\u003c/a> in Kings County and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.envirostor.dtsc.ca.gov/public/hwmp_profile_report?global_id=CAD980675276\">Buttonwillow landfill facility\u003c/a> in Kern County.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On paper, the sites appear to have enough space to take contaminated soil. Last year, Jennifer Andrews, a spokesperson for WM (formerly known as Waste Management Inc.), which operates the \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/kettleman-hills-facility/\">Kettleman Hills Facility\u003c/a>, told CalMatters the site “has enough capacity to meet the State of California’s hazardous waste disposal needs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We also have plenty of space to meet the needs of (Department of Toxic Substances Control) waste for years to come, providing the agency permits new disposal units at our site.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the two landfills have been controversial. Both were the subject of numerous regulatory violations over the years and advocates have long protested about the sites, which are near communities of color. In 2014 the Department of Toxic Substances Control approved \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2017/03/KettlemanCommunityflyerEnglish512.pdf\">an expansion at Kettleman Hills (PDF)\u003c/a>, prompting environmental justice and community groups to file a civil rights complaint, records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "‘They need some other alternatives, and the reality is I don’t see them building another hazardous waste landfill.’",
"name": "pullquote",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"size": "medium",
"align": "right",
"citation": "Bradley Angel, executive director, Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice",
"label": ""
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradley Angel is executive director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, one of the groups that filed the complaint, which ultimately led to a \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/2016/08/10/landmark-agreement-reached-to-benefit-environmental-justice-communities-and-resolve-a-civil-rights-complaint-on-hazardous-waste-permitting-decision/\">settlement agreement\u003c/a> including provisions for more health assessment and environmental monitoring, state records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They need some other alternatives, and the reality is I don’t see them building another hazardous waste landfill,” Angel said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said there’s “not the political appetite.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, the Department of Toxic Substances Control appeared to acknowledge as much in a \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2021/05/FINAL-CPHWRI-REPORT_ADA_FINAL.pdf?emrc=0e9fe7\">2017 report that looked at ways to reduce hazardous waste\u003c/a>, including treating more contaminated soil on-site as opposed to excavating it. The report cited a “difficulty in gaining consensus in the siting of new facilities” as leading to a focus on strategies to reduce the amount of hazardous waste generated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, if you can’t build more sites to take hazardous waste because nobody wants it in their backyard, then you better figure out a way to make less of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Cleaning up hazardous soil\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>California’s efforts to address a long history of environmental harm at old industrial and military installations produces hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic soil each year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Department of Toxic Substances Control “is trying to remediate contamination that was created over decades by unscrupulous private sector actors. Now, does that mean they ought to be dumping in Arizona?” Allen, the Democrat from Redondo Beach, asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The senator said his committee will hold an oversight hearing on the Department of Toxic Substances Control sometime this year. Other topics will likely include recent reporting from \u003cem>The Los Angeles Times\u003c/em> suggesting the state isn’t ensuring properties around the Exide facility are properly \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-10/exide-lead-cleanup-leaves-fear-and-frustration-in-its-wake\">cleaned of lead-contaminated soil\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s not an easy answer here. But that doesn’t mean that we accept the status quo,” Allen said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1981792\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1981792 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-La-Paz-County-AZ-MG-CM-06-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A landscape of beige, sandy soil and green scrub across it, with a rise the same color as the sand in the distance.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-La-Paz-County-AZ-MG-CM-06-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-La-Paz-County-AZ-MG-CM-06-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-La-Paz-County-AZ-MG-CM-06-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-La-Paz-County-AZ-MG-CM-06-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2023/03/112922-La-Paz-County-AZ-MG-CM-06.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The La Paz County Regional Landfill near the Colorado River Indian Tribes reservation in Arizona on Nov. 29, 2022. \u003ccite>(Miguel Gutierrez Jr./CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Other states could, of course, also take action. Oregon in the late 1980s adopted a rule that effectively bars California from dumping hazardous waste in that state’s regular landfills. Nevada has a similar rule. (California disposed of a large amount of contaminated soil at a Nevada facility in recent years, shipping records show. But that site is designed and permitted to handle hazardous waste.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sandoval, the lawmaker whose district includes an area around the South Yuma landfill, said Arizona legislation to restrict California’s dumping is possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nobody wants that in their backyard,” Sandoval said. “Obviously California doesn’t want it in their backyard. That’s why they’re bringing it over to us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Utah legislators CalMatters reached out to didn’t respond to requests for comment. Regulators in that state recently signified their intent to deny a permit for a landfill on the banks of the Great Salt Lake that CalMatters reported was planning to take California’s contaminated soil. CalMatters reported in January that the company behind the project filed an economic analysis with its state regulators calling the toxic soil a “unique market opportunity created by California law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://documents.deq.utah.gov/waste-management-and-radiation-control/facilities/promontory-point-landfill/DSHW-2023-001251.pdf\">proposed permit denial\u003c/a> indicates there is already enough landfill capacity to handle Utah’s waste needs.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/science/1981790/california-legislature-reviews-toxic-waste-disposal",
"authors": [
"byline_science_1981790"
],
"categories": [
"science_31",
"science_35",
"science_40",
"science_4450"
],
"tags": [
"science_182",
"science_194",
"science_192",
"science_490",
"science_309",
"science_381"
],
"featImg": "science_1981793",
"label": "source_science_1981790"
},
"science_1981710": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "science_1981710",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1981710",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1677246023000
]
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "federal-wildlife-propose-california-spotted-owl-protection",
"title": "Federal Wildlife Officials Propose Listing the California Spotted Owl as Endangered",
"publishDate": 1677246023,
"format": "standard",
"headTitle": "Federal Wildlife Officials Propose Listing the California Spotted Owl as Endangered | KQED",
"labelTerm": {
"site": "science"
},
"content": "\u003cp>Federal wildlife officials on Wednesday announced a proposal to classify one of two dwindling California spotted owl populations as endangered after a lawsuit by conservation groups required the government to reassess a Trump administration decision not to protect the brown-and-white birds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed that California spotted owls that have their habitats in coastal and Southern California be protected under the Endangered Species Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That population “does not have a strong ability to withstand normal variations in environmental conditions, persist through catastrophic events, or adapt to new environmental conditions throughout its range,” which led the agency to propose listing it as endangered, wildlife officials said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other California spotted owl population, which lives in Sierra Nevada forests in California and western Nevada, \u003ca href=\"https://www.fws.gov/press-release/2023-02/public-comment-sought-proposal-list-california-spotted-owl\">would be classified as threatened\u003c/a>, the agency said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The habitat of the medium-sized brown owl with white spots on its head and chest and a barred tail is under serious threat from current logging practices and climate change, including increased drought, disease and more extreme wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most California spotted owls live on land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How much the population has declined since conservation groups started their effort to protect it more than 20 years ago is unclear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only available demographic data on spotted owls living in coastal and Southern California was collected in the San Bernardino National Forest and shows a decline of 9%, the federal wildlife service said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sierra Nevada population shows declines ranging from 50% to 31% percent in some areas, the agency said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The federal agency’s decision follows an agreement reached in November between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and several conservation groups that sued the federal agency in 2020 over its decision not to protect the California spotted owl population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Justin Augustine, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued, applauded the agency’s decision and said he was happy to see the California spotted owls could finally get the safeguards they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Augustine said he planned to use the 60-day public comment period to push for more protections for the California spotted owl population in the Sierra Nevada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the things I’ll be addressing is the issue of how to make sure that (Sierra Nevada) spotted owls are actually protected under their threatened status rather than potentially allowing some logging to occur that would be harmful,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California spotted owl is one of three spotted owl subspecies and the last to be protected under the Endangered Species Act, Augustine said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other two subspecies are the northern spotted owl and the Mexican spotted owl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The northern spotted owl habitat is in Oregon, Washington and Northern California. The tiny owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, sparking an intense battle over logging in the region. In 2020, the Trump administration refused to upgrade it to endangered status despite its losing nearly 4% of its population annually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Mexican spotted owl was first listed as threatened in the U.S. in 1993. It is found in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, parts of West Texas and Mexico.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The species is in danger of extinction due to loss of habitat to logging, development, mining and wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
"blocks": [],
"excerpt": "The US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed that California spotted owls, which have their habitats in coastal and Southern California, be protected under the Endangered Species Act.",
"status": "publish",
"parent": 0,
"modified": 1725576841,
"stats": {
"hasAudio": false,
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"paragraphCount": 20,
"wordCount": 569
},
"headData": {
"title": "Federal Wildlife Officials Propose Listing the California Spotted Owl as Endangered | KQED",
"description": "The US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed that California spotted owls, which have their habitats in coastal and Southern California, be protected under the Endangered Species Act.",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogDescription": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"twDescription": "",
"twImgId": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Federal Wildlife Officials Propose Listing the California Spotted Owl as Endangered",
"datePublished": "2023-02-24T05:40:23-08:00",
"dateModified": "2024-09-05T15:54:01-07:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"sticky": false,
"nprByline": "Olga R. Rodriguez\u003cbr>Associated Press",
"excludeFromSiteSearch": "Include",
"showOnAuthorArchivePages": "No",
"articleAge": "0",
"path": "/science/1981710/federal-wildlife-propose-california-spotted-owl-protection",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Federal wildlife officials on Wednesday announced a proposal to classify one of two dwindling California spotted owl populations as endangered after a lawsuit by conservation groups required the government to reassess a Trump administration decision not to protect the brown-and-white birds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed that California spotted owls that have their habitats in coastal and Southern California be protected under the Endangered Species Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That population “does not have a strong ability to withstand normal variations in environmental conditions, persist through catastrophic events, or adapt to new environmental conditions throughout its range,” which led the agency to propose listing it as endangered, wildlife officials said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other California spotted owl population, which lives in Sierra Nevada forests in California and western Nevada, \u003ca href=\"https://www.fws.gov/press-release/2023-02/public-comment-sought-proposal-list-california-spotted-owl\">would be classified as threatened\u003c/a>, the agency said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The habitat of the medium-sized brown owl with white spots on its head and chest and a barred tail is under serious threat from current logging practices and climate change, including increased drought, disease and more extreme wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most California spotted owls live on land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How much the population has declined since conservation groups started their effort to protect it more than 20 years ago is unclear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only available demographic data on spotted owls living in coastal and Southern California was collected in the San Bernardino National Forest and shows a decline of 9%, the federal wildlife service said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sierra Nevada population shows declines ranging from 50% to 31% percent in some areas, the agency said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The federal agency’s decision follows an agreement reached in November between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and several conservation groups that sued the federal agency in 2020 over its decision not to protect the California spotted owl population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Justin Augustine, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued, applauded the agency’s decision and said he was happy to see the California spotted owls could finally get the safeguards they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Augustine said he planned to use the 60-day public comment period to push for more protections for the California spotted owl population in the Sierra Nevada.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the things I’ll be addressing is the issue of how to make sure that (Sierra Nevada) spotted owls are actually protected under their threatened status rather than potentially allowing some logging to occur that would be harmful,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California spotted owl is one of three spotted owl subspecies and the last to be protected under the Endangered Species Act, Augustine said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other two subspecies are the northern spotted owl and the Mexican spotted owl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The northern spotted owl habitat is in Oregon, Washington and Northern California. The tiny owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, sparking an intense battle over logging in the region. In 2020, the Trump administration refused to upgrade it to endangered status despite its losing nearly 4% of its population annually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Mexican spotted owl was first listed as threatened in the U.S. in 1993. It is found in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, parts of West Texas and Mexico.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The species is in danger of extinction due to loss of habitat to logging, development, mining and wildfires.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/science/1981710/federal-wildlife-propose-california-spotted-owl-protection",
"authors": [
"byline_science_1981710"
],
"categories": [
"science_31",
"science_4450"
],
"tags": [
"science_194",
"science_261",
"science_804"
],
"featImg": "science_1981715",
"label": "science"
}
},
"podcastsReducer": {
"isFetching": false,
"fetchFailed": false,
"hasFetched": false,
"podcasts": {}
},
"radioProgramsReducer": {
"isFetching": false,
"fetchFailed": false,
"hasFetched": false,
"radioPrograms": {}
},
"programsReducer": {
"all-things-considered": {
"id": "all-things-considered",
"title": "All Things Considered",
"info": "Every weekday, \u003cem>All Things Considered\u003c/em> hosts Robert Siegel, Audie Cornish, Ari Shapiro, and Kelly McEvers present the program's trademark mix of news, interviews, commentaries, reviews, and offbeat features. Michel Martin hosts on the weekends.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 1pm-2pm, 4:30pm-6:30pm\u003cbr />SAT-SUN 5pm-6pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/All-Things-Considered-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/all-things-considered/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/all-things-considered"
},
"american-suburb-podcast": {
"id": "american-suburb-podcast",
"title": "American Suburb: The Podcast",
"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?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/American-Suburb-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/news/series/american-suburb-podcast",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 19
},
"link": "/news/series/american-suburb-podcast/",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/RBrW",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?mt=2&id=1287748328",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/American-Suburb-p1086805/",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/series/american-suburb-podcast/feed/podcast",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkMzMDExODgxNjA5"
}
},
"baycurious": {
"id": "baycurious",
"title": "Bay Curious",
"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.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Bay-Curious-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Bay Curious",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/news/series/baycurious",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 3
},
"link": "/podcasts/baycurious",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/category/bay-curious-podcast/feed/podcast",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9a90d476-aa04-455d-9a4c-0871ed6216d4/bay-curious",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/bay-curious",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/6O76IdmhixfijmhTZLIJ8k"
}
},
"bbc-world-service": {
"id": "bbc-world-service",
"title": "BBC World Service",
"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9pm-10pm, TUE-FRI 1am-2am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BBC-World-Service-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_world_service",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "BBC World Service"
},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/global-news-podcast/id135067274?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/BBC-World-Service-p455581/",
"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
}
},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The California Report",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kqeds-the-california-report/id79681292",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/26099305-72af-4542-9dde-ac1807fe36d5/kqed-s-the-california-report",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432285393/the-california-report",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqedfm-kqeds-the-california-report-podcast-8838",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/tag/tcram/feed/podcast"
}
},
"californiareportmagazine": {
"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Magazine-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The California Report Magazine",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 10
},
"link": "/californiareportmagazine",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-california-report-magazine/id1314750545",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/564733126/the-california-report-magazine",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/the-california-report-magazine",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/tag/tcrmag/feed/podcast"
}
},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
"title": "Close All Tabs",
"tagline": "Your irreverent guide to the trends redefining our world",
"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/CAT_2_Tile-scaled.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Close All Tabs",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 1
},
"link": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/close-all-tabs/id214663465",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC6993880386",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/92d9d4ac-67a3-4eed-b10a-fb45d45b1ef2/close-all-tabs",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/6LAJFHnGK1pYXYzv6SIol6?si=deb0cae19813417c"
}
},
"code-switch-life-kit": {
"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"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 />",
"airtime": "SUN 9pm-10pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Code-Switch-Life-Kit-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/code-switch-life-kit",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/1112190608?mt=2&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC5waHA_aWQ9NTEwMzEy",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/3bExJ9JQpkwNhoHvaIIuyV",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510312/podcast.xml"
}
},
"commonwealth-club": {
"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",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.commonwealthclub.org/podcasts",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/commonwealth-club-of-california-podcast/id976334034?mt=2",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Commonwealth-Club-of-California-p1060/"
}
},
"forum": {
"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"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",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/forum",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
"link": "/forum",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kqeds-forum/id73329719",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432307980/forum",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqedfm-kqeds-forum-podcast",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC9557381633"
}
},
"freakonomics-radio": {
"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/4s8b",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
}
},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 7pm-8pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Fresh-Air-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/4s8b",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Fresh-Air-p17/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
}
},
"here-and-now": {
"id": "here-and-now",
"title": "Here & Now",
"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
"airtime": "MON-THU 11am-12pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Here-And-Now-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/here-and-now",
"subsdcribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?mt=2&id=426698661",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Here--Now-p211/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
}
},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/hiddenbrain.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908750?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Science-Podcasts/Hidden-Brain-p787503/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510308/podcast.xml"
}
},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"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.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Arts--Culture-Podcasts/How-I-Built-This-p910896/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510313/podcast.xml"
}
},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"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. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
"imageAlt": "KQED Hyphenación",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hyphenaci%C3%B3n/id1191591838",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
"youtube": "https://www.youtube.com/c/kqedarts",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"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. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/790253322/the-political-mind-of-jerry-brown",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/series/jerrybrown/feed/podcast/",
"tuneIn": "http://tun.in/pjGcK",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/the-political-mind-of-jerry-brown",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/54C1dmuyFyKMFttY6X2j6r?si=K8SgRCoISNK6ZbjpXrX5-w",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/44420f75-3b0e-4301-ab3b-16da6b09e543/the-political-mind-of-jerry-brown"
}
},
"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/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/xtTd",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Latino-USA-p621/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"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": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=201853034&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/APM-Marketplace-p88/",
"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"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)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"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>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindshift-podcast/id1078765985",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/0MxSpNYZKNprFLCl7eEtyx"
}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/onourwatch",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/0OLWoyizopu6tY1XiuX70x",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-Our-Watch-p1436229/",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-our-watch",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "pbs"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Perspectives",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id73801135",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432309616/perspectives",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/perspectives/category/perspectives/feed/",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93dzIua3FlZC5vcmcvcGVyc3BlY3RpdmVzL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BlcnNwZWN0aXZlcy9mZWVkLw"
}
},
"planet-money": {
"id": "planet-money",
"title": "Planet Money",
"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/sections/money/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/M4f5",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Planet-Money-p164680/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml"
}
},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Political Breakdown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-breakdown/id1327641087",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0c2d153-ad36-4c8d-901d-f1da6a724824/political-breakdown",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/572155894/political-breakdown",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/political-breakdown",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/07RVyIjIdk2WDuVehvBMoN",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/tag/political-breakdown/feed/podcast"
}
},
"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/possible/id1677184070",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
}
},
"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pri.org/programs/the-world",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "PRI"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pri-the-world",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pris-the-world-latest-edition/id278196007?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/News--Politics-Podcasts/PRIs-The-World-p24/",
"rss": "http://feeds.feedburner.com/pri/theworld"
}
},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
"airtime": "SUN 12am-1am, SAT 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/radiolab1400.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/radiolab/",
"meta": {
"site": "science",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/radiolab",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/radiolab/id152249110?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/RadioLab-p68032/",
"rss": "https://feeds.wnyc.org/radiolab"
}
},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
"airtime": "SAT 4pm-5pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/reveal300px.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/reveal",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/reveal/id886009669",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Reveal-p679597/",
"rss": "http://feeds.revealradio.org/revealpodcast"
}
},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Rightnowish-Podcast-Tile-500x500-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Rightnowish with Pendarvis Harshaw",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/rightnowish",
"meta": {
"site": "arts",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 16
},
"link": "/podcasts/rightnowish",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/721590300/rightnowish",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/programs/rightnowish/feed/podcast",
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rightnowish/id1482187648",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/rightnowish",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkMxMjU5MTY3NDc4",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/7kEJuafTzTVan7B78ttz1I"
}
},
"science-friday": {
"id": "science-friday",
"title": "Science Friday",
"info": "Science Friday is a weekly science talk show, broadcast live over public radio stations nationwide. Each week, the show focuses on science topics that are in the news and tries to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join host Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program.",
"airtime": "FRI 11am-1pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Science-Friday-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/science-friday",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/science-friday",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=73329284&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Science-Friday-p394/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/science-friday"
}
},
"snap-judgment": {
"id": "snap-judgment",
"title": "Snap Judgment",
"tagline": "Real stories with killer beats",
"info": "The Snap Judgment radio show and podcast mixes real stories with killer beats to produce cinematic, dramatic radio. Snap's musical brand of storytelling dares listeners to see the world through the eyes of another. This is storytelling... with a BEAT!! Snap first aired on public radio stations nationwide in July 2010. Today, Snap Judgment airs on over 450 public radio stations and is brought to the airwaves by KQED & PRX.",
"airtime": "SAT 1pm-2pm, 9pm-10pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Snap-Judgment-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Snap Judgment",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://snapjudgment.org",
"meta": {
"site": "arts",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 4
},
"link": "https://snapjudgment.org",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/snap-judgment/id283657561",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/449018144/snap-judgment",
"stitcher": "https://www.pandora.com/podcast/snap-judgment/PC:241?source=stitcher-sunset",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/3Cct7ZWmxHNAtLgBTqjC5v",
"rss": "https://snap.feed.snapjudgment.org/"
}
},
"soldout": {
"id": "soldout",
"title": "SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America",
"tagline": "A new future for housing",
"info": "Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Sold-Out-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/soldout",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 13
},
"link": "/podcasts/soldout",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/911586047/s-o-l-d-o-u-t-a-new-future-for-housing",
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/introducing-sold-out-rethinking-housing-in-america/id1531354937",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/soldout",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/38dTBSk2ISFoPiyYNoKn1X",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/sold-out-rethinking-housing-in-america",
"tunein": "https://tunein.com/radio/SOLD-OUT-Rethinking-Housing-in-America-p1365871/"
}
},
"spooked": {
"id": "spooked",
"title": "Spooked",
"tagline": "True-life supernatural stories",
"info": "",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Spooked-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Spooked",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://spookedpodcast.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 7
},
"link": "https://spookedpodcast.org/",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/spooked/id1279361017",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/549547848/snap-judgment-presents-spooked",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/76571Rfl3m7PLJQZKQIGCT",
"rss": "https://feeds.simplecast.com/TBotaapn"
}
},
"tech-nation": {
"id": "tech-nation",
"title": "Tech Nation Radio Podcast",
"info": "Tech Nation is a weekly public radio program, hosted by Dr. Moira Gunn. Founded in 1993, it has grown from a simple interview show to a multi-faceted production, featuring conversations with noted technology and science leaders, and a weekly science and technology-related commentary.",
"airtime": "FRI 10pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Tech-Nation-Radio-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://technation.podomatic.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "science",
"source": "Tech Nation Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/tech-nation",
"subscribe": {
"rss": "https://technation.podomatic.com/rss2.xml"
}
},
"ted-radio-hour": {
"id": "ted-radio-hour",
"title": "TED Radio Hour",
"info": "The TED Radio Hour is a journey through fascinating ideas, astonishing inventions, fresh approaches to old problems, and new ways to think and create.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm, SAT 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/tedRadioHour.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/?showDate=2018-06-22",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/ted-radio-hour",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/8vsS",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=523121474&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/TED-Radio-Hour-p418021/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510298/podcast.xml"
}
},
"thebay": {
"id": "thebay",
"title": "The Bay",
"tagline": "Local news to keep you rooted",
"info": "Host Devin Katayama walks you through the biggest story of the day with reporters and newsmakers.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Bay-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Bay",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/thebay",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 2
},
"link": "/podcasts/thebay",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bay/id1350043452",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/d800ea4c-7a2c-42f2-b861-edaf78a5db0b/the-bay",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/586725995/the-bay",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/the-bay",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/4BIKBKIujizLHlIlBNaAqQ",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC8259786327"
}
},
"thelatest": {
"id": "thelatest",
"title": "The Latest",
"tagline": "Trusted local news in real time",
"info": "",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/The-Latest-2025-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Latest",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/thelatest",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 6
},
"link": "/thelatest",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-latest-from-kqed/id1197721799",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/1257949365/the-latest-from-k-q-e-d",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/5KIIXMgM9GTi5AepwOYvIZ?si=bd3053fec7244dba",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC9137121918"
}
},
"theleap": {
"id": "theleap",
"title": "The Leap",
"tagline": "What if you closed your eyes, and jumped?",
"info": "Stories about people making dramatic, risky changes, told by award-winning public radio reporter Judy Campbell.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Leap-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Leap",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/theleap",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 17
},
"link": "/podcasts/theleap",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-leap/id1046668171",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/447248267/the-leap",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/the-leap",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/3sSlVHHzU0ytLwuGs1SD1U",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/programs/the-leap/feed/podcast"
}
},
"the-moth-radio-hour": {
"id": "the-moth-radio-hour",
"title": "The Moth Radio Hour",
"info": "Since its launch in 1997, The Moth has presented thousands of true stories, told live and without notes, to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. Moth storytellers stand alone, under a spotlight, with only a microphone and a roomful of strangers. The storyteller and the audience embark on a high-wire act of shared experience which is both terrifying and exhilarating. Since 2008, The Moth podcast has featured many of our favorite stories told live on Moth stages around the country. For information on all of our programs and live events, visit themoth.org.",
"airtime": "SAT 8pm-9pm and SUN 11am-12pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/theMoth.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://themoth.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "arts",
"source": "prx"
},
"link": "/radio/program/the-moth-radio-hour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-moth-podcast/id275699983?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/The-Moth-p273888/",
"rss": "http://feeds.themoth.org/themothpodcast"
}
},
"the-new-yorker-radio-hour": {
"id": "the-new-yorker-radio-hour",
"title": "The New Yorker Radio Hour",
"info": "The New Yorker Radio Hour is a weekly program presented by the magazine's editor, David Remnick, and produced by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Each episode features a diverse mix of interviews, profiles, storytelling, and an occasional burst of humor inspired by the magazine, and shaped by its writers, artists, and editors. This isn't a radio version of a magazine, but something all its own, reflecting the rich possibilities of audio storytelling and conversation. Theme music for the show was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of tUnE-YArDs.",
"airtime": "SAT 10am-11am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-New-Yorker-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/tnyradiohour",
"meta": {
"site": "arts",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/the-new-yorker-radio-hour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1050430296",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/New-Yorker-Radio-Hour-p803804/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/newyorkerradiohour"
}
},
"the-sam-sanders-show": {
"id": "the-sam-sanders-show",
"title": "The Sam Sanders Show",
"info": "One of public radio's most dynamic voices, Sam Sanders helped launch The NPR Politics Podcast and hosted NPR's hit show It's Been A Minute. Now, the award-winning host returns with something brand new, The Sam Sanders Show. Every week, Sam Sanders and friends dig into the culture that shapes our lives: what's driving the biggest trends, how artists really think, and even the memes you can't stop scrolling past. Sam is beloved for his way of unpacking the world and bringing you up close to fresh currents and engaging conversations. The Sam Sanders Show is smart, funny and always a good time.",
"airtime": "FRI 12-1pm AND SAT 11am-12pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/The-Sam-Sanders-Show-Podcast-Tile-400x400-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.kcrw.com/shows/the-sam-sanders-show/latest",
"meta": {
"site": "arts",
"source": "KCRW"
},
"link": "https://www.kcrw.com/shows/the-sam-sanders-show/latest",
"subscribe": {
"rss": "https://feed.cdnstream1.com/zjb/feed/download/ac/28/59/ac28594c-e1d0-4231-8728-61865cdc80e8.xml"
}
},
"the-splendid-table": {
"id": "the-splendid-table",
"title": "The Splendid Table",
"info": "\u003cem>The Splendid Table\u003c/em> hosts our nation's conversations about cooking, sustainability and food culture.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Splendid-Table-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.splendidtable.org/",
"airtime": "SUN 10-11 pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/the-splendid-table"
},
"this-american-life": {
"id": "this-american-life",
"title": "This American Life",
"info": "This American Life is a weekly public radio show, heard by 2.2 million people on more than 500 stations. Another 2.5 million people download the weekly podcast. It is hosted by Ira Glass, produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media, delivered to stations by PRX The Public Radio Exchange, and has won all of the major broadcasting awards.",
"airtime": "SAT 12pm-1pm, 7pm-8pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/thisAmericanLife.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.thisamericanlife.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "wbez"
},
"link": "/radio/program/this-american-life",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=201671138&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"rss": "https://www.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/rss.xml"
}
},
"tinydeskradio": {
"id": "tinydeskradio",
"title": "Tiny Desk Radio",
"info": "We're bringing the best of Tiny Desk to the airwaves, only on public radio.",
"airtime": "SUN 8pm and SAT 9pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/300x300-For-Member-Station-Logo-Tiny-Desk-Radio-@2x.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/g-s1-52030/tiny-desk-radio",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/tinydeskradio",
"subscribe": {
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/g-s1-52030/rss.xml"
}
},
"wait-wait-dont-tell-me": {
"id": "wait-wait-dont-tell-me",
"title": "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!",
"info": "Peter Sagal and Bill Kurtis host the weekly NPR News quiz show alongside some of the best and brightest news and entertainment personalities.",
"airtime": "SUN 10am-11am, SAT 11am-12pm, SAT 6pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Wait-Wait-Podcast-Tile-300x300-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/wait-wait-dont-tell-me/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/wait-wait-dont-tell-me",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/Xogv",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=121493804&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Wait-Wait-Dont-Tell-Me-p46/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/344098539/podcast.xml"
}
},
"weekend-edition-saturday": {
"id": "weekend-edition-saturday",
"title": "Weekend Edition Saturday",
"info": "Weekend Edition Saturday wraps up the week's news and offers a mix of analysis and features on a wide range of topics, including arts, sports, entertainment, and human interest stories. The two-hour program is hosted by NPR's Peabody Award-winning Scott Simon.",
"airtime": "SAT 5am-10am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Weekend-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/weekend-edition-saturday/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/weekend-edition-saturday"
},
"weekend-edition-sunday": {
"id": "weekend-edition-sunday",
"title": "Weekend Edition Sunday",
"info": "Weekend Edition Sunday features interviews with newsmakers, artists, scientists, politicians, musicians, writers, theologians and historians. The program has covered news events from Nelson Mandela's 1990 release from a South African prison to the capture of Saddam Hussein.",
"airtime": "SUN 5am-10am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Weekend-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/weekend-edition-sunday/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/weekend-edition-sunday"
}
},
"racesReducer": {},
"racesGenElectionReducer": {},
"racesGenElection2026Reducer": {},
"radioSchedulesReducer": {},
"listsReducer": {
"posts/science?tag=climate-change": {
"isFetching": false,
"latestQuery": {
"from": 144,
"size": 12
},
"vitalsOnly": false,
"totalRequested": 12,
"isLoading": false,
"isLoadingMore": true,
"total": {
"value": 632,
"relation": "eq"
},
"items": [
"science_1982776",
"science_1982750",
"science_1982673",
"science_1982494",
"science_1982309",
"science_1982130",
"science_1982147",
"science_1982079",
"science_1982049",
"science_1981943",
"science_1981790",
"science_1981710"
],
"complete": true
}
},
"recallGuideReducer": {
"intros": {},
"policy": {},
"candidates": {}
},
"savedArticleReducer": {
"articles": [],
"status": {}
},
"newslettersReducer": {
"isFetching": false,
"fetchFailed": false,
"hasFetched": false,
"newsletters": {},
"isSubscribing": false,
"isUnsubscribing": false,
"subscribedNewsletters": {}
},
"termsReducer": {
"about": {
"name": "About",
"type": "terms",
"id": "about",
"slug": "about",
"link": "/about",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"arts": {
"name": "Arts & Culture",
"grouping": [
"arts",
"pop",
"trulyca"
],
"description": "KQED Arts provides daily in-depth coverage of the Bay Area's music, art, film, performing arts, literature and arts news, as well as cultural commentary and criticism.",
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts",
"slug": "arts",
"link": "/arts",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"artschool": {
"name": "Art School",
"parent": "arts",
"type": "terms",
"id": "artschool",
"slug": "artschool",
"link": "/artschool",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"bayareabites": {
"name": "KQED food",
"grouping": [
"food",
"bayareabites",
"checkplease"
],
"parent": "food",
"type": "terms",
"id": "bayareabites",
"slug": "bayareabites",
"link": "/food",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"bayareahiphop": {
"name": "Bay Area Hiphop",
"type": "terms",
"id": "bayareahiphop",
"slug": "bayareahiphop",
"link": "/bayareahiphop",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"campaign21": {
"name": "Campaign 21",
"type": "terms",
"id": "campaign21",
"slug": "campaign21",
"link": "/campaign21",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"careers": {
"name": "Careers",
"type": "terms",
"id": "careers",
"slug": "careers",
"link": "/careers",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"checkplease": {
"name": "KQED food",
"grouping": [
"food",
"bayareabites",
"checkplease"
],
"parent": "food",
"type": "terms",
"id": "checkplease",
"slug": "checkplease",
"link": "/food",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"education": {
"name": "Education",
"grouping": [
"education"
],
"type": "terms",
"id": "education",
"slug": "education",
"link": "/education",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"elections": {
"name": "Elections",
"type": "terms",
"id": "elections",
"slug": "elections",
"link": "/elections",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"events": {
"name": "Events",
"type": "terms",
"id": "events",
"slug": "events",
"link": "/events",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"event": {
"name": "Event",
"alias": "events",
"type": "terms",
"id": "event",
"slug": "event",
"link": "/event",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"filmschoolshorts": {
"name": "Film School Shorts",
"type": "terms",
"id": "filmschoolshorts",
"slug": "filmschoolshorts",
"link": "/filmschoolshorts",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"food": {
"name": "KQED food",
"grouping": [
"food",
"bayareabites",
"checkplease"
],
"type": "terms",
"id": "food",
"slug": "food",
"link": "/food",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"forum": {
"name": "Forum",
"relatedContentQuery": "posts/forum?",
"parent": "news",
"type": "terms",
"id": "forum",
"slug": "forum",
"link": "/forum",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"futureofyou": {
"name": "Future of You",
"grouping": [
"science",
"futureofyou"
],
"parent": "science",
"type": "terms",
"id": "futureofyou",
"slug": "futureofyou",
"link": "/futureofyou",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"jpepinheart": {
"name": "KQED food",
"relatedContentQuery": "posts/food,bayareabites,checkplease",
"parent": "food",
"type": "terms",
"id": "jpepinheart",
"slug": "jpepinheart",
"link": "/food",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"liveblog": {
"name": "Live Blog",
"type": "terms",
"id": "liveblog",
"slug": "liveblog",
"link": "/liveblog",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"livetv": {
"name": "Live TV",
"parent": "tv",
"type": "terms",
"id": "livetv",
"slug": "livetv",
"link": "/livetv",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"lowdown": {
"name": "The Lowdown",
"relatedContentQuery": "posts/lowdown?",
"parent": "news",
"type": "terms",
"id": "lowdown",
"slug": "lowdown",
"link": "/lowdown",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"mindshift": {
"name": "Mindshift",
"parent": "news",
"description": "MindShift explores the future of education by highlighting the innovative – and sometimes counterintuitive – ways educators and parents are helping all children succeed.",
"type": "terms",
"id": "mindshift",
"slug": "mindshift",
"link": "/mindshift",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"news": {
"name": "News",
"grouping": [
"news",
"forum"
],
"type": "terms",
"id": "news",
"slug": "news",
"link": "/news",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"newsletters": {
"name": "newsletters",
"type": "terms",
"id": "newsletters",
"slug": "newsletters",
"link": "/newsletters",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"perspectives": {
"name": "Perspectives",
"parent": "radio",
"type": "terms",
"id": "perspectives",
"slug": "perspectives",
"link": "/perspectives",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"podcasts": {
"name": "Podcasts",
"type": "terms",
"id": "podcasts",
"slug": "podcasts",
"link": "/podcasts",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"pop": {
"name": "Pop",
"parent": "arts",
"type": "terms",
"id": "pop",
"slug": "pop",
"link": "/pop",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"pressroom": {
"name": "Pressroom",
"type": "terms",
"id": "pressroom",
"slug": "pressroom",
"link": "/pressroom",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"quest": {
"name": "Quest",
"parent": "science",
"type": "terms",
"id": "quest",
"slug": "quest",
"link": "/quest",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"radio": {
"name": "Radio",
"grouping": [
"forum",
"perspectives"
],
"description": "Listen to KQED Public Radio – home of Forum and The California Report – on 88.5 FM in San Francisco, 89.3 FM in Sacramento, 88.3 FM in Santa Rosa and 88.1 FM in Martinez.",
"type": "terms",
"id": "radio",
"slug": "radio",
"link": "/radio",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"root": {
"name": "KQED",
"image": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png",
"imageWidth": 1200,
"imageHeight": 630,
"headData": {
"title": "KQED | News, Radio, Podcasts, TV | Public Media for Northern California",
"description": "KQED provides public radio, television, and independent reporting on issues that matter to the Bay Area. We’re the NPR and PBS member station for Northern California."
},
"type": "terms",
"id": "root",
"slug": "root",
"link": "/root",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"science": {
"name": "Science",
"grouping": [
"science",
"futureofyou"
],
"description": "KQED Science brings you award-winning science and environment coverage from the Bay Area and beyond.",
"type": "terms",
"id": "science",
"slug": "science",
"link": "/science",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"stateofhealth": {
"name": "State of Health",
"parent": "science",
"type": "terms",
"id": "stateofhealth",
"slug": "stateofhealth",
"link": "/stateofhealth",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"support": {
"name": "Support",
"type": "terms",
"id": "support",
"slug": "support",
"link": "/support",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"thedolist": {
"name": "The Do List",
"parent": "arts",
"type": "terms",
"id": "thedolist",
"slug": "thedolist",
"link": "/thedolist",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"trulyca": {
"name": "Truly CA",
"grouping": [
"arts",
"pop",
"trulyca"
],
"parent": "arts",
"type": "terms",
"id": "trulyca",
"slug": "trulyca",
"link": "/trulyca",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"tv": {
"name": "TV",
"type": "terms",
"id": "tv",
"slug": "tv",
"link": "/tv",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"voterguide": {
"name": "Voter Guide",
"parent": "elections",
"alias": "elections",
"type": "terms",
"id": "voterguide",
"slug": "voterguide",
"link": "/voterguide",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"guiaelectoral": {
"name": "Guia Electoral",
"parent": "elections",
"alias": "elections",
"type": "terms",
"id": "guiaelectoral",
"slug": "guiaelectoral",
"link": "/guiaelectoral",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"science_tag_climate-change": {
"isLoading": true
},
"science_194": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_194",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "194",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "climate change",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "climate change Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 198,
"slug": "climate-change",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/climate-change"
},
"source_science_1982776": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_science_1982776",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "NPR",
"link": "https://www.npr.org",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_science_1982673": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_science_1982673",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "CalMatters",
"link": "https://www.kqed.org/news/affiliate/calmatters",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_science_1982494": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_science_1982494",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Climate Change",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_science_1982309": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_science_1982309",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Sea Level Rise ",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_science_1982130": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_science_1982130",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Inside Climate News",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_science_1982147": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_science_1982147",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Inside Climate News",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_science_1981943": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_science_1981943",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "NPR",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_science_1981790": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_science_1981790",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Calmatters",
"isLoading": false
},
"science_31": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_31",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "31",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Climate",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "category",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Climate Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 33,
"slug": "climate",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/category/climate"
},
"science_35": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_35",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "35",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Environment",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "category",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Environment Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 37,
"slug": "environment",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/category/environment"
},
"science_40": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_40",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "40",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "News",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "category",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "News Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 42,
"slug": "news",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/category/news"
},
"science_4450": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_4450",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "4450",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Science",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "category",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Science Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 4450,
"slug": "science",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/category/science"
},
"science_98": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_98",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "98",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Water",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "category",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Water Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 102,
"slug": "water",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/category/water"
},
"science_3905": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_3905",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "3905",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "California water",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "California water Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 3905,
"slug": "california-water",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/california-water"
},
"science_4414": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_4414",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "4414",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "featured-science",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "featured-science Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 4414,
"slug": "featured-science",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/featured-science"
},
"science_3448": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_3448",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "3448",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "flood",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "flood Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 3448,
"slug": "flood",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/flood"
},
"science_490": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_490",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "490",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "groundwater",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "groundwater Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 496,
"slug": "groundwater",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/groundwater"
},
"science_539": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_539",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "539",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "reservoir",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "reservoir Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 545,
"slug": "reservoir",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/reservoir"
},
"science_2873": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_2873",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "2873",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Oceans",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "category",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Oceans Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 2873,
"slug": "oceans",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/category/oceans"
},
"science_986": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_986",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "986",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "california academy of sciences",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "california academy of sciences Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 993,
"slug": "california-academy-of-sciences",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/california-academy-of-sciences"
},
"science_2455": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_2455",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "2455",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "California climate",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "California climate Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 2467,
"slug": "california-climate",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/california-climate"
},
"science_2409": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_2409",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "2409",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "marine biology",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "marine biology Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 2421,
"slug": "marine-biology",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/marine-biology"
},
"science_813": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_813",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "813",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "news",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "news Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 820,
"slug": "news-2",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/news-2"
},
"science_5183": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_5183",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "5183",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "San Francisco",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "San Francisco Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 5183,
"slug": "san-francisco",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/san-francisco"
},
"science_392": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_392",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "392",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "agriculture",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "agriculture Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 398,
"slug": "agriculture",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/agriculture"
},
"science_5178": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_5178",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "5178",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "California",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "California Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 5178,
"slug": "california",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/california"
},
"science_1452": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_1452",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1452",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "farming",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "farming Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 1461,
"slug": "farming",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/farming"
},
"science_33": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_33",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "33",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Energy",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "category",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Energy Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 35,
"slug": "energy",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/category/energy"
},
"science_39": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_39",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "39",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Health",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "category",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Health Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 41,
"slug": "health",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/category/health"
},
"science_524": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_524",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "524",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "air quality",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "air quality Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 530,
"slug": "air-quality",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/air-quality"
},
"science_4093": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_4093",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "4093",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "CARB",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "CARB Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 4093,
"slug": "carb",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/carb"
},
"science_1627": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_1627",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1627",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "carbon emissions",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "carbon emissions Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 1636,
"slug": "carbon-emissions",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/carbon-emissions"
},
"science_2114": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_2114",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "2114",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "flooding",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "flooding Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 2125,
"slug": "flooding",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/flooding"
},
"science_4859": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_4859",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "4859",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "groundwater rise",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "groundwater rise Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 4859,
"slug": "groundwater-rise",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/groundwater-rise"
},
"science_206": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_206",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "206",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "sea level rise",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "sea level rise Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 210,
"slug": "sea-level-rise",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/sea-level-rise"
},
"science_460": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_460",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "460",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "engineering",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "engineering Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 466,
"slug": "engineering-2",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/engineering-2"
},
"science_572": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_572",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "572",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "drought",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "drought Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 578,
"slug": "drought",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/drought"
},
"science_1462": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_1462",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1462",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Sierra snowpack",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Sierra snowpack Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 1471,
"slug": "sierra-snowpack",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/sierra-snowpack"
},
"science_1754": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_1754",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "1754",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "environmental justice",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "environmental justice Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 1764,
"slug": "environmental-justice",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/environmental-justice"
},
"science_2856": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_2856",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "2856",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "carbon capture",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "carbon capture Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 2856,
"slug": "carbon-capture",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/carbon-capture"
},
"science_4417": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_4417",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "4417",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "featured-news",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "featured-news Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 4417,
"slug": "featured-news",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/featured-news"
},
"science_306": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_306",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "306",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "greenhouse gases",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "greenhouse gases Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 311,
"slug": "greenhouse-gases",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/greenhouse-gases"
},
"science_2227": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_2227",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "2227",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "atmospheric river",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "atmospheric river Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 2239,
"slug": "atmospheric-river",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/atmospheric-river"
},
"science_182": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_182",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "182",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "climate",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "climate Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 186,
"slug": "climate-2",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/climate-2"
},
"science_192": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_192",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "192",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "environment",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "environment Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 196,
"slug": "environment-2",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/environment-2"
},
"science_309": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_309",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "309",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "science",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "science Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 314,
"slug": "science",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/science"
},
"science_381": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_381",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "381",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "toxics",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "toxics Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 387,
"slug": "toxics",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/toxics"
},
"science_261": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_261",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "261",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "endangered species",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "endangered species Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 265,
"slug": "endangered-species",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/endangered-species"
},
"science_804": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "science_804",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "science",
"id": "804",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "wildlife",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "wildlife Archives | KQED Science",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 811,
"slug": "wildlife",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/science/tag/wildlife"
}
},
"userPermissionsReducer": {
"wpLoggedIn": false
},
"eventsReducer": {},
"fssReducer": {},
"tvDailyScheduleReducer": {},
"tvWeeklyScheduleReducer": {},
"tvPrimetimeScheduleReducer": {},
"tvMonthlyScheduleReducer": {},
"userAccountReducer": {
"user": {
"email": null,
"emailStatus": "EMAIL_UNVALIDATED",
"loggedStatus": "LOGGED_OUT",
"loggingChecked": false,
"articles": [],
"firstName": null,
"lastName": null,
"phoneNumber": null,
"fetchingMembership": false,
"membershipError": false,
"memberships": [
{
"id": null,
"startDate": null,
"firstName": null,
"lastName": null,
"familyNumber": null,
"memberNumber": null,
"memberSince": null,
"expirationDate": null,
"pfsEligible": false,
"isSustaining": false,
"membershipLevel": "Prospect",
"membershipStatus": "Non Member",
"lastGiftDate": null,
"renewalDate": null,
"lastDonationAmount": null
}
]
},
"authModal": {
"isOpen": false,
"view": "LANDING_VIEW"
},
"error": null
},
"youthMediaReducer": {},
"checkPleaseReducer": {
"filterData": {
"region": {
"key": "Restaurant Region",
"filters": [
"Any Region"
]
},
"cuisine": {
"key": "Restaurant Cuisine",
"filters": [
"Any Cuisine"
]
}
},
"restaurantDataById": {},
"restaurantIdsSorted": [],
"error": null
},
"userAgentReducer": {
"userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)",
"isBot": true
}
}
