By Annie Ropeik for Energy News Network.
Broadcast version by Kathryn Carley for Maine News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Overnight in early July last year, Vermont solar installer Bill Chidsey got a call that a grocery store he worked with in his village of Hardwick was flooded. He arrived to find feet of water in the Buffalo Mountain Market's utility room, spilling over from the rising Lamoille River in a record-breaking rainstorm.

"The grocery store survived by an inch," Chidsey said. "If it had rained fifteen more minutes, they'd have lost four compressors."

He's now helping the co-op build a net-zero energy system that will use solar power and recycled waste heat from the store's refrigerators. But it's going to be a long project - just one of countless examples Vermont has seen since last year of how sustainable rebuilds in the wake of a flood don't happen quickly.

"I think we're just getting started with this," Chidsey said.

Advocates, utilities and state agencies have seen slow progress and mixed success since July 2023 in trying to replace flood-damaged home and business energy systems with more efficient, cost-effective, low-carbon technology. Now, they hope to redouble these efforts as part of a long-term recovery - both to keep people affected last year from falling through the cracks, and to be more resilient in the next storm.

"We consider that we're now about to start 'phase two,' where we hope to go back and talk about energy systems," said Sue Minter, who leads Capstone Community Action in central Vermont. "In the emergency - with winter and nowhere else to go, and oh, by the way, no contractors available, labor shortage, material shortage, crisis - we couldn't do the transition work, but that doesn't mean we won't."

Lessons from storm Irene

More than a decade ago, Minter was the deputy secretary of Vermont's Agency of Transportation when the 2011 Tropical Storm Irene - comparable in its severity to the 2023 floods - washed out hundreds of miles of roads and bridges across the state.

As the state's Irene Recovery Officer, Minter spent the next two-plus years grappling with federal regulators and pushing through new policies and programs to rebuild "stronger, with resilience in mind," she said. This included allowing easier upsizing of culverts and clearing development out of floodplains.

Many places with these post-Irene resilience upgrades and reforms saw less damage in the July 2023 floods as a result, Minter said. Vermont officials even came to a recent meeting of the Maine Climate Council, after a pair of weather disasters there, to talk about their approach to flood-resilient infrastructure.

"When you know you're in an emergency, and you know everything has been destroyed, you also know it's an opportunity to innovate ... to rebuild differently," Minter said.

Vermont, often called a potential haven for future climate migrants, is nonetheless seeing more frequent and intense rain and floods as one of its top impacts from human-caused climate change. The state also relies heavily on pricey, carbon-intensive heating oil.

After last year's floods, Vermont leaders wanted to seize the moment to help affected residents make future-looking energy and efficiency upgrades on a widespread scale.

"They're ripping out drywall, they're having to update systems - this is the time to make sure that you do it properly," said Efficiency Vermont supply chain engagement manager Steve Casey.

Making emergency rebates accessible

Efficiency Vermont, a statewide energy efficiency utility, created an emergency flood rebate program for affected homeowners and renters, reallocating $10 million in pandemic aid already set aside for low-income weatherization projects.

The new program offered up to $10,000 per household to repair or replace flood-damaged energy systems and other appliances, on top of existing funding for efficient electric heat pump water heaters and electrical panel upgrades. Similar rebates for damaged businesses were just raised to a $16,000 cap.

But uptake on this funding has been slow. As of January, only 155 households had received flood rebates of $5,100 apiece on average, according to state legislative testimony from Efficiency Vermont director Peter Walke.

It's partly because the initial $10 million was "an overshoot to ensure we wouldn't run out of funds," allocated quickly "without knowing what the actual need would be," said spokesperson Matthew Smith.

But people also ran into myriad barriers to using the money quickly.

Some lacked up-front cash to pay for upgrades that would be rebated later. In response, Efficiency Vermont has begun offering a 100% cost-coverage program for the lowest-income clients, where contractors are paid directly by the state. That program had paid out nearly $92,000 to 10 people as of January, per Walke's testimony, with 58 more in the pipeline.

"The households that are still in significant need at this stage were vulnerable households to begin with," Casey said. "We do have this repeating situation where flood events kind of just exacerbate some vulnerabilities for certain households."

'Life and safety first'

The timing of the 2023 floods was another complicating factor. The upcoming heating season loomed in the months after the disaster, and limited housing stock meant people couldn't relocate from damaged homes, unlike after Tropical Storm Irene, said Sue Minter.

"In 2023, July, people had to get into their homes as quickly as possible," she said. "You always have to have life and safety first."

The repairs and retrofits needed most urgently were not simple. Many people's water and space heating systems and electrical panels were in basements, "the first place to flood," said Casey.

Parts of Vermont are trying to change this norm - Waterbury, for example, requires basements to be above flood elevation in new or substantially improved home construction, among other flood protections.

Chidsey, the solar installer in Hardwick, said he and his electrician have tried to shift to putting electrical panels on the outside of homes, with any indoor subpanels out of the basement. Ideally, he said, the cellar becomes "just a hole in the ground that holds up the house, because water comes in often now."

But moving HVAC infrastructure out of a vulnerable basement, whether to meet a local requirement or voluntarily, isn't easy, especially after major damage, Casey said. People may not have a ready space for that equipment on the first floor, or may need mold remediation before taking on serious flood-proofing.

It means that the advocates working to facilitate upgrades have had to take a long view.

'The promise that we'll be back'

Last fall, Efficiency Vermont, Capstone, the state's utilities and a range of other partners stood up a new system of Vermont Energy Recovery Teams, who went into damaged homes to help people plan and prioritize repairs before winter, including coordinating holistically across contractors and funding sources.

Some homes were able to switch straight to heat pumps as a cheaper, cleaner method of water and space heating, officials said. But for many, a replacement oil or gas system was the simplest short-term option.

Efficiency Vermont does not normally offer incentives for installing fossil fuel systems, but made exceptions for high-efficiency Energy Star-rated models as part of its flood recovery rebate program.

"In every case, we looked for something that was more efficient than what they had before," said Vermont Gas energy innovation director Richard Donnelly, who was part of many recovery team home visits.

In each of those visits, the teams would take note of residents' long-term needs and goals for decarbonization, resilience, comfort and lower energy burdens, with an emphasis on heat pumps.

"We left off with sort of the promise that we'll be back," said Vermont Gas CEO Neale Lunderville - that "there's money available for some of these technologies, that we can help you with the same process."

The recovery teams are now under the umbrella of GreenSavingSmart, a pilot energy and financial coaching program for low-income residents run by the Vermont Community Action Partnership. They'll soon begin revisiting last fall's clients to facilitate a new round of resilient improvements.

"In the grand scheme of things, it's a hopeful pathway to allow these households to have - once they're fully made whole and recovered from all of this - a lower energy burden and cost burden than the situation they were in to begin with," said Steve Spatz, an account manager on the supply chain team at Efficiency Vermont. "It really is an opportunity to ... upgrade the conditions for the household."


Annie Ropeik wrote this article for Energy News Network.

A law signed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul takes effect this week to penalize polluters for emissions.

The Climate Change Superfund Act puts a fine on the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions between 2000 and 2018, specifically those responsible for more than 1 billion tons of global greenhouse gas emissions. The collected money will be put into a special fund to pay for climate change resilience measures starting in 2028.

Rich Schrader, northeast senior government affairs director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the law will greatly benefit New York State.

"Each budget would be put into the state budget to do work like upgrading roads and bridges that have been damaged and do work in terms of installing new water systems," Schrader outlined. "Part of the money would go into things like, since we're having hotter summers or hotter springs, really, how to get better air conditioning in public housing, but also in public schools."

He noted it does not account for projects funded by federal dollars. The law faced opposition from oil and gas companies, threatening to raise prices statewide if it were enacted. Reports show each region faces millions of dollars in climate costs, totaling more than $2 billion.

New York's law is the second in the nation, after Vermont approved a similar bill in mid-2024. Both states have seen record climate change effects such as flooding and storm damage and are facing emerging threats like poor air quality from wildfires. Schrader pointed out the companies paying into the two states' funds are some of the highest global greenhouse gas emitters.

"Those seven, eight companies at the top end of this that mostly produce oil and gas, some coal; they represent two-thirds of all the total tons emitted, the billion or so tons that have been emitted," Schrader reported.

Some companies potentially facing fines include Chevron, B-P, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco and the National Iranian Oil Company. Reports show companies such as Exxon knew as far back as the 1950s fossil fuels were causing climate change.


get more stories like this via email

By Diego Mendoza-Moyers for El Paso Matters.
Broadcast version by Freda Ross for Texas News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

El Pasoans will no longer have to rely on the Rio Grande for drinking water in the near future, as El Paso Water gradually replaces the river that has historically supplied nearly half of the city’s water with other sources that are less susceptible to drought.

Regional drought and fluctuating snowfall at the head of the Rio Grande basin in southern Colorado in recent years have left El Paso Water officials increasingly unsure how much water will flow through the river into the city each year. 

In 2020, water from the Rio Grande supplied 38% of the city’s water, but in the next two years, the river supplied just 14% and 17% of El Paso’s water supply. Last year, river water provided 31%.

Soon, however, El Paso Water won’t have to worry about those yearly fluctuations as much. 

“We’re probably only a year or two out from being able to operate without any water” from the Rio Grande, said John Balliew, El Paso Water’s longtime chief executive. “We would like to be drought-proof as a community.”

If the drought in the region persists or even gets worse in the years ahead, instead of relying on the Rio Grande for water, El Paso’s water utility plans to use a mix of technologies to make up the difference. 

Balliew highlighted the $150 million advanced water purification plant that will clean wastewater to drinkable standards and is expected to start operating next to the utility’s Bustamante Wastewater Treatment Plant in the Lower Valley within the next few years, as well as an expansion at El Paso’s water desalination plant near the airport to boost daily production capacity to 33 million gallons per day from 27.5 million currently. The utility is paying for that desal plant expansion by using some of the extra cash generated from the rate increase it enacted earlier this year. 

An engineered arroyo in the far Northeast will also allow the utility to pump more excess water underground to replenish groundwater supplies.

“With all of those things put together, I would agree with what (Balliew is) saying,” said Alex Mayer, director of the Center for Environmental Resource Management at the University of Texas at El Paso. “There’ll be very little reliance on the Rio Grande.”

Shifting away from the Rio Grande as a water source is a big development for El Paso’s water utility, which is expecting to see a more intense drought next year amid a La Niña weather pattern. 

Scott Reinert, water resources manager for El Paso Water, said he expects Elephant Butte will be just 5% full this fall, down from about 12% full as of August 1 and 23% full this time last year. Once snow melts in southern Colorado after winter, it flows south through the Rio Grande basin in New Mexico before reaching Elephant Butte, where the water is released to El Paso. So, the city will probably receive less water from the Rio Grande next year and will have to pump more groundwater compared with this year, Balliew said.

“This year is relatively normal, but next year is probably not,” Balliew said.

On average, El Pasoans use about 110 million gallons of water per day. On the hottest summer days, however, water usage across the city can top 162 million gallons as people water their plants more, run water-using evaporative air conditioners or shower more than once. 

El Paso Water says it can pump a maximum of 170 million gallons of groundwater from its system per day. And the Advanced Water Purification plant will produce as much as 10 million gallons per day when it’s up-and-running – the “window” of supplies that the utility needs, Balliew said. 

“That 10 is an important number, because that’s really the difference between having to implement the drought and water emergency plan and not,” Balliew said. “Ten million gallons per day is the window that we need to be able to operate without any surface water.”

The utility isn’t quite there yet; for now even a small amount of water coming from Elephant Butte “makes all the difference,” Balliew said. 

An ongoing years-long water dispute between Texas, New Mexico and the federal government – over complaints that New Mexico has shorted Texas on Rio Grande water deliveries – remains stalled after the U.S Supreme Court in June rejected a settlement between the two states. But even if the parties reach a settlement at some point, persistent drought and climate change still threaten to further diminish Rio Grande flows into El Paso.

El Paso Water’s strategy to develop a drought-proof supply of drinking water is motivated by history. 

Back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, El Paso was entirely dependent on the Rio Grande for water, but a severe drought hit and by 1951 the city’s water utility warned of shortages. At a meeting of the city water board that year, Water Department Superintendent E. J. Umbenhauer said “there isn’t going to be enough water to go around this summer,” according to the El Paso Times. 

After that water shortage episode, El Paso leaders in 1952 established the Public Service Board to govern city-owned El Paso Water and solve the problem of water scarcity here. Part of the solution over the last several decades has been encouraging water conservation – a success up until now that has driven daily water usage down from 187 gallons per person in 1990 down to around 130 gallons per person today. 

The utility hasn’t been able to lower per-person usage much further over the last decade, however. As a result, diversifying the city’s water supply, instead of just lowering demand, has also become a major focus for El Paso Water. 

“What we have been striving for for many years is to get to a point where, if that happens again, where there’s no water that can come out of the Rio Grande,” Balliew said, “that we would be able to continue to operate the city like normal.”

To make up a shortfall in river water in any given year, the water utility pumps more groundwater out of the Hueco Bolson aquifer and, to a lesser extent, the Mesilla Bolson beneath the Westside. Over the last four years, the Hueco Bolson has annually provided as little as 40% of El Paso’s water and as much as 61%.

“It’s meaningful in that we won’t have to worry about that variability anymore, which is very likely caused by climate change,” Mayer said of less reliance on the Rio Grande. “The consequence of that is that the cost goes up.”

Largely replacing the Rio Grande with more reliable water sources won’t come cheap. 

El Paso Water has been spending heavily in recent years to renovate the city’s aging water and sewer systems that were built in the post-World War II era, and also to develop new water supply and storage systems. 

During this year and the next two years, the utility plans to spend $2.3 billion on capital projects compared with $1.3 billion over the prior three years, from 2021 through 2023. In order to fund citywide infrastructure improvements, El Paso Water in its 2023 financial report said it expected water rates to double over the ensuing five years, and wastewater rates to rise by 86% over that time.

Roughly speaking, it costs El Paso Water something like $150 to pump an acre-foot of fresh groundwater, which is nearly 326,000 gallons of water. Drawing and treating an acre-foot of surface water from the Rio Grande costs around $300. And an acre-foot of desalinated water costs the utility about $500 to produce. 

Meanwhile, the advanced water purification process that El Paso Water plans to rely more on in the future costs $1,000 per acre-foot of water produced, according to the utility’s estimates. And piping water from Dell City into El Paso – El Paso Water’s long term water supply plan for the decades ahead – will cost around $3,000 per acre-foot. 

“The poorest people in the city will be paying as much as 10% of their income just for indoor water. That doesn’t include outdoor water,” Mayer said. “It’s time to start thinking about how these increases are going to affect our poorest residents.”

El Paso Water’s rates per gallon increase as a customer uses more water. So Mayer suggested El Paso Water could look at lifting rates even further on the highest-use tiers, meaning the biggest water consumers would see the largest bill hike. The utility could also look at increasing the fixed charge on the bill, called the water supply replacement charge, Mayer said. 

Balliew last year said El Paso Water needed to study more how to give a “life line” to low-income customers with water bills set to escalate further in the coming years. He said the utility will at some point establish a citizen committee and take a look at changing how it bills customers. He also suggested El Paso Water could tweak the block tiers in which customers pay more per unit of water after using a certain amount of water every month. 

El Paso Water is poised to maintain a stable water supply for decades, but the question is how much that may cost customers. 

“We don’t want companies to make a decision: ‘Well, we’re not going to invest in El Paso because of the water supply situation,’” Balliew said. 

El Paso Water, Balliew added, is “confident, regardless of what sort of climate impact, drought, those sorts of things, that we’ll be able to function normally.”


Diego Mendoza-Moyers wrote this article for El Paso Matters.


get more stories like this via email

A recent report gives the majority of cruise ships anchoring in Maine ports a failing environmental grade.

The Cruise Ship Report Card from Friends of the Earth finds companies, including Carnival and Princess Cruises, release significant amounts of toxic wastewater and air pollution while docked in cities such as Portland and Bar Harbor.

Report author and the group's Oceans and Vessels Program Director, Marcie Keever, said newer ships may run on liquefied natural gas, but are still adding to the industry's climate footprint.

"You're driving your hotel around on the ocean," said Keever. "It's going to use a ton of fuel and generate a significant amount of CO2 emissions."

The cruise ship industry maintains it is highly regulated and has taken steps to install advanced water- and air-pollution controls.

But Keever said despite hundreds of industry violations, the EPA has done little to enforce protections for coastal communities.

Corporate transparency played a large role in the cruise ship ratings. Companies that fully disclose their environmental and sustainability practices fared better than those that do not.

The Norwegian-based Hurtigruten, which is developing the first zero-emission cruise ship, won top marks for its openness and environmental efforts.

Keever said the report card can help consumers decide if a cruise is the right kind of vacation for them.

"If the environment and climate are important to you, really take a look and make a decision based on that," said Keever, "instead of just what the industry is putting out as this sort of shine on their industry."

Keever said cruise companies will continue to violate environmental laws without independent observers on-board to ensure water and air quality standards.

The last remaining on-board observation program, the Ocean Rangers out of Alaska, was defunded in 2019.





get more stories like this via email