MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. – Clean-water advocates say they’re are hoping 2018 will be a year of better water quality in the Great Lakes and oceans.

Carolyn Box, science program director at 5 Gyres, warns that by the year 2050, there will be more plastic in the water than fish, with 95 percent of it coming from land. That comes from trash that ends up in storm drains and rivers, then flows into the Great Lakes and oceans.

She said plastic is trapped within currents, taking at least 10 years to cycle back out - if it doesn't get eaten by marine life or sink to the bottom first.

"It's breaking down from wave action and sunlight, so it's breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces,” Box said. “And it's also attracting other contaminants to the plastic itself, which is making those pieces of plastic more toxic."

Box said more people are talking about plastic waste, and companies are taking baby steps to eliminate it. There's a petition drive on Change.org asking Royal Caribbean International to reduce the use of disposable plastic utensils. The group The Last Plastic Straw has said on average, each person in the U.S. uses about 38,000 straws between the ages of 5 and 65.

In 2015, Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed into law the Microbead Free Waters Act, which amended the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to ban personal-care products containing plastic microbeads.

But the Alliance for the Great Lakes said that's not enough. Microbeads only make up 16 percent of the plastic pollution. Box said microfibers also are under a lot of scrutiny because they can cause a lot of damage to the ecosystem.

"Synthetic clothing is now shedding plastic into our waterways,” she said. “So it's going down our sinks and down our drains from our washing machines and heading to the wastewater treatment plants and making its way out into the waterways."

Box said lawmakers and businesses need to step up, but individuals can help too by buying as little plastic as possible, particularly water bottles. A study by the Rochester Institute of Technology found nearly 10,000 metric tons - or 22 million pounds - of plastic debris enter the Great Lakes every year.


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A legal challenge is expected since the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has granted key permit approvals to a Canadian energy company to reroute its controversial Line 5 pipeline in northern Wisconsin.

The DNR's approval allows Enbridge Energy to begin preparations for the rerouting project.

Stephanie Tsosie, staff attorney for Earthjustice, represents the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe, whose lands have been directly affected by Line 5 for years. She said Enbridge still needs federal approval to move forward with construction.

"This is not a foregone conclusion that Enbridge is going to have this pipeline operating," Tsosie pointed out. "There's a lot of processes, there's a lot of approvals, and this is just one of them. And we're ready to stand with the Band and figure out ways to make sure that, whatever approvals there are, that they comply with the law."

She explained the current line is illegally trespassing on tribal lands. Enbridge's solution is to add 41 miles to reroute it, which would still have dire consequences in the event of an oil spill. A pending lawsuit by the tribe to have the line completely removed from its lands awaits a federal court decision which could halt the project entirely.

Labor groups favor the jobs the Line 5 project could bring to the state, and industry and ag groups rely on the fossil fuels the pipeline transports. Environmental groups countered the risk of oil spills and damage to waterways and wildlife is paramount.

Evan Feinauer, staff attorney for Clean Wisconsin, said the debate misses the bigger picture by ignoring the current climate threats and their generational consequences.

"I just hope that people can hold that long-term view in their heads and think about people beyond themselves, including people who are children today or not even born yet," Feinauer asserted. "Think about the world that they're going to have to inherit. And that includes all of our choices, including our mistakes."

He added Clean Wisconsin will take legal action to challenge the DNR-issued permits for Line 5 and ask for construction to be paused until it is resolved. Enbridge said the rerouting project would create more than 700 jobs, many for tribal members, and provide millions in tax revenue to the state.


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By Jennifer Oldham for Yes! Magazine.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for Georgia News Connection reporting for the YES! Media-Public News Service Collaboration

Weather forecaster Chad Gimmestad leans toward an oversized computer screen to jab at double-digit rainfall totals. These data were recorded by volunteers who braved Hurricane Milton’s 55 mph gusts to read plastic rain gauges mounted in waterlogged central Florida backyards.

“I’m really surprised so many people had reports today,” says the National Weather Service meteorologist based in Boulder, Colorado. “This is their most important observation—maybe of their whole time volunteering—and so they want to get it right.”

At 7 a.m. on Oct. 10, in the chaotic hours after the record-breaking storm swept ashore, one citizen scientist in Daytona Beach Shores reported 15.8 inches of rain. Another near Lake Helen clocked 15.37 inches for a similar 24-hour period, and added in the notes section: “Lots of tree limbs down. Some roads are flooded due to lakes overflowing their banks.”

Observations like these are added to an internet database at 7 a.m. each day by volunteers with the nationwide Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS. The observations from 26,500 stations across the country contribute to National Weather Service flood warnings that may save lives by accounting for the variability of how much rain fell and where. Radar and satellites are not sophisticated enough to provide such down-to-the-backyard estimates.

In one such alert, for the St. Johns River in Florida’s Seminole County, forecasters more than an hour’s drive away, in the city of Melbourne, added CoCoRaHS rainfall totals to other on-the-ground observations, radar data, and river models. They estimated that runoff from Milton could cause the river to rise to 10.2 feet by the night of Oct. 14.

“The river is forecast to reach Minor Flood Stage later tonight, and will continue to climb through Moderate Flood, reaching Major Flood Stage later this weekend,” reads the alert Gimmestad pulls up on his screen. It cautioned many roads were “impassable, limiting access to homes.”

CoCoRaHS reports also help forecasters provide tornado, hail, fire, and other weather-related warnings in real time by allowing participants to log storm notes in the network’s computer system any time of day.

These observations—which provide input in up to half of such warnings—get routed to the nearest National Weather Service station, where they ring alarm bells. Meteorologists use them to caution people to take shelter or evacuate. Scientists also use CoCoRaHS data after storms have passed to refine computer models to better reflect precipitation variability.

Such life-saving weather data are vital as the United States suffered 28 climate and weather disasters whose costs exceeded $1 billion each—the most such events ever recorded in a year. Storm warnings will become all the more important as a warmer atmosphere traps more moisture—leading to more recurrent and intense rainfall.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 calls for a breakup of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service, saying that these federal agencies push climate propaganda. But shutting down these essential services could stymie the ability of forecasters to issue comprehensive weather warnings and protect people at risk during climate disasters. 

As the presidential election looms and global warming intensifies, CoCoRaHS precipitation records, which account for two-thirds of the observational data collected by federal agencies on how much it rained or snowed, are becoming even more indispensable. 

“It’s a huge value,” he adds. “Radar is really good at capturing the pattern, and CoCoRaHS observations give us the amounts, and so we put those together and it gives us a really nice map of how much it rained, hailed, or snowed.”

The Critical Role of Data Collection

Altogether, CoCoRaHS’s stations span all 50 states, Canada, the Bahamas, and several U.S. territories. The network comprises about 75 million measurements and growing. 

The effort emerged in the wake of a deadly 1998 flash flood in Fort Collins, Colorado, that caught many people by surprise. The network is now one among hundreds of citizen science projects nationwide whose data are helping researchers discover new drugs, identify new galaxies, and catalog species recovery.

“CoCoRaHS changed the way we do weather forecasting,” says Ellen McCallie, program director in the Directorate for STEM Education at the U.S. National Science Foundation. The consistency and reliability of the data are helping improve National Weather Service precipitation predictions, she adds.

After CoCoRaHS volunteers watch a training video, they are assigned a station number. They install a National Weather Service–approved cylindrical plastic rain gauge, from which they measure precipitation and record the data online.

Network coordinators, who often work for state climate offices, urge volunteers to collect readings each morning, even if there’s no precipitation. These data are immediately visible on weather service maps. Each station is represented by a dot whose color reflects the amount of precipitation—red for more, blue for less. 

In addition to the vast public benefit CoCoRaHS provides, the citizen scientists who are the backbone of the network say they benefit personally from the work, too.

“It’s something to do every day at 7 a.m.,” says Noah Newman, the program’s education and outreach coordinator. “One volunteer working their way through Alcoholics Anonymous got their five-year [sobriety] chip thanks to CoCoRaHS, because they said no to going to the bars so they could get up to read their rain gauge.”

Retired Montana State University scientist and faculty member Bill Locke recounted in an email how recording daily precipitation in the CoCoRaHS database has helped him cope with his depression in the 11 years since he signed on to be a part of the network. 

“From now until March I need to pull on Bean boots, a headlamp, and appropriate attire to trek to my gauge,” he wrote, adding that the plastic cylinder is about 82 feet away from his Montana home. In the winter, these duties often involve measuring and collecting snow from a board on the ground and swapping cylinders if the existing one is full. “It’s tough to go back to bed after all that!”

A People’s Climate Record

The CoCoRaHS network isn’t the only example of how citizen scientists contribute to the nation’s climate record. Federal agencies also rely on about 8,700 people who volunteer with the 134-year-old Cooperative Observer Program, or COOP.

These citizens collect temperature and precipitation data daily from National Weather Service equipment, and then report it electronically to the service. This on-the-ground grassroots system is smaller and not as geographically diverse as CoCoRaHS, says meteorologist Gimmestad.

“Instead of having official weather reporting stations that are 30 or 40 miles apart—so we might have one per county—with CoCoRaHS, we might have 10 or 50 stations in the county,” he says. “This way, we don’t have to use one point to represent a huge area, and so we know how rainfall was distributed around that county.”

Data from CoCoRaHS and COOP—together with observations from weather stations at the nation’s airports—account for about 80% of the precipitation numbers that federal scientists use to compile what’s known as the U.S. Climate Normals—a catalog of temperature and precipitation averages from 1991 to 2020. The 30-year retrospective is vital for the health of the nation’s economy because it’s a go-to resource for businesses. 

“The construction industry wants to know how many rainy days there will be at a location in which they are putting in a bid—and to learn how to design air conditioning and heating for buildings,” says Michael Palecki, the lead scientist on the project at the National Centers for Environmental Information. “People want to know what the weather is going to be like where they are looking to move, and, of course, agriculture is one of our biggest users.”

Tracking Hurricane Helene

Some 11 CoCoRaHS volunteers work in Palecki’s office in Asheville, North Carolina. The physical scientist, who had to remove a few trees from his property following Hurricane Helene, recounts how the region spent two weeks without power and remains without drinkable tap water.

When the air conditioning went down in the National Centers for Environmental Information’s computer room—a vast repository of weather data—temperatures soared to 120 degrees, requiring officials to shut down the system and delaying the publication of weather-related information nationwide.

The life-saving value of volunteer precipitation data was also evident in North Carolina as hardy CoCoRaHS participants tugged on rain gear to collect rainfall totals from their plastic gauges in the face of Helene’s “biblical devastation.”

One wrote in observation notes from Flat Springs on Sept. 28: “Absolutely catastrophic impacts from flooding, landslides, and high winds. Major roads impassable. Neighboring fire department … completely carried away by Elk River.”

The North Carolina State Climate Office relied in part on CoCoRaHS observations to determine where, and how much, rain fell. Four network volunteers in the western part of the state recorded totals from Sept. 25 to Sept. 27: 24.12 inches in Spruce Pine, 22.36 inches in Foscoe, and about 22 inches each at stations south of Black Mountain and Hendersonville.

Using a federal weather atlas that categorizes the likelihood of extreme storm events, state weather officials determined rainfall produced by Helene likely qualifies it as a one-in-1,000-year storm.

“Yet another event of this magnitude within the state offers even more evidence that our climate is changing, and in extreme ways,” wrote Corey Davis, an assistant state climatologist, in an online summary of Helene’s formation and impacts.

Davis continued: “The rapid intensification of Helene over the Gulf, the amount of moisture available in its surrounding environment, and its manifestation as locally heavy—and in some cases, historically unheard of—rainfall amounts are all known side effects of a warmer atmosphere.”

The National Weather Service is currently updating this atlas, and in doing so, is relying “very extensively” on extreme precipitation data recorded by CoCoRaHS volunteers to determine where heavy rainfall was distributed over time, Palecki says.

Understanding Science in Daily Life

One volunteer whose data will likely be reflected in this record is Matt Kelsch, a hydrometeorologist in Colorado who is also the Boulder County coordinator for CoCoRaHS. Kelsch has collected precipitation data for the network—or asked a house sitter to do it—without missing a day since June 2001.

His plastic rain gauge sits in his expansive backyard near his garden, which, on Oct. 10, is bone dry.

But it’s not always this way. Kelsch, who has an encyclopedic memory for notable water-related weather events, says the wettest year he recorded was 2013, when about 34 inches fell. And one of the “most impressive spells of snow” occurred in 2006, with 26 inches around Dec. 21, then 14 inches a week later, and 11 more inches seven days after that. 

For Kelsch, the value of CoCoRaHS lies in its ability to teach people of all ages to tune into the variability of precipitation in their own neighborhoods. Volunteering helps participants “improve their skills at estimating how much rain is falling,” he says.

“They can see when the storm is analyzed how much rain fell—their report was one of the dots that was used,” he adds. “CoCoRaHS, even though it’s simple, connects people with the science.”


Jennifer Oldham wrote this article for Yes! Magazine.


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An environmental group in Pennsylvania is among those backing a global plastics treaty set to be finalized by year's end.

It is estimated 99% of plastics are made with fossil fuels and southwestern Pennsylvania is a hotspot for fracking.

Sarah Martik, executive director of the Center for Coalfield Justice, said she will attend the treaty negotiations in South Korea and is urging the Biden-Harris administration to ratify it. The U.S. initially supported production caps and timelines to curb plastics production but recently withdrew its support.

Martik pointed out countries failing to sign environmental agreements often cannot trade with those that do, causing global strain.

"Right now, waste trade is such a huge issue and the United States as both a producer and a consumer of a lot of plastic goods, exports a lot of our plastic waste to other countries," Martik explained. "Those other countries have more ambition in this treaty than we do. So we're hopeful that there will be strong nonparty provisions on trade here."

Martik noted the Biden-Harris administration is responsible for negotiating the treaty, while President-Elect Donald Trump has expressed disinterest in environmental agreements and plans to withdraw the U.S. once again from the Paris Agreement, although global leadership on environmental issues is crucial for long-term benefits.

Martik emphasized fracking for natural gas in Pennsylvania has effects far beyond energy production. While the fossil fuel industry highlights its benefits, she argued it downplays the harm caused, such as how everyday items like plastic bags contribute to pollution and degrade air quality.

"Pennsylvania is the second-highest producer of fracked gas in the country," Martik stressed. "We have pipelines leading down to Texas and Louisiana. We have the gas in Pennsylvania is being sent up to the Shell Ethane Cracker plant in Beaver County. So, the gas that is drilled here is pretty critical to the plastics industry."

Research by the Ohio River Valley Institute found fracking has not led to job growth in Pennsylvania, with major gas-producing counties losing 10,000 jobs and more than 50,000 residents since 2008. By 2021, oil and gas jobs made up less than 2% of the state's workforce.


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