MADRID (Reuters) – The government of the southern Spanish region of Andalusia plans to buy swathes of land around the Donana National Park in a bid to preserve and expand its wetlands threatened by frequent droughts, rising temperatures and illegal water usage.
Regional leader Juanma Moreno said on Tuesday the planned purchase of 7,500 hectares (18,533 acres) would expand Donana’s area by 14% in what he called “the biggest action for the conservation of the park in the last decades”.
Scientists warn that the park, endangered by climate change and illegal irrigation, is in critical condition with lagoons drying out and biodiversity disappearing, and urge a reduction in the pumping of water.
The Donana wetlands harbour many endemic and threatened species, such as freshwater eels and turtles and provide an important refuge for migratory birds heading southward after breeding in northern Europe.
Average rainfall in Spain over the past 12 months has been 17% lower than the average recorded between 1991 and 2020. The environment ministry has said climate change was causing increasingly frequent and intense droughts, with Spain being more vulnerable than other European countries.
The planned land purchase comes after Moreno’s conservative administration came under heavy criticism from environmentalists and the government in Madrid over its plan to legalise additional irrigation around Donana.
The purchase includes around 3,500 ha of artificial wetland in Veta la Palma estate that was used as fish farms until 2021 and now runs the risk of drying out.
Donana’s lagoons are surrounded by a sea of greenhouses and a complex system of pipes that take water from illegally drilled wells for use by farmers growing strawberries and other berries.
Acting Environment Minister Teresa Ribera, whose Socialist- led national government has vowed to protect the park, welcomed the measure but said it does not tackle the problem of lack of water head on.
She has announced a plan to spend more than 12 billion euros to alleviate the impact of drought. The funds will go mostly towards reusing water, building desalination plants and improving water infrastructure, she added.
By The Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST)
A team of researchers, led by Professor Jungki Ryu in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST and Professor Soojin Park from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), have achieved a significant breakthrough in the development of a hybrid silicon photocatalyst. This innovative catalyst utilizes solar power to produce hydrogen and high-value compounds efficiently, marking a major step forward in green hydrogen production technology.
The newly developed photocatalyst is both non-toxic and eco-friendly, addressing the limitations associated with previous catalysts that were not sunlight-responsive or posed toxicity concerns. Silicon-based photocatalysts demonstrate excellent light absorption properties, making them highly efficient in utilizing solar energy. Moreover, these non-toxic materials do not emit harmful chemicals during their production process.
Previous research faced challenges in achieving continuous production of hydrogen alongside high-value compounds due to a lack of suitable catalysts. Toxic catalysts used under strong base conditions often led to environmental pollution issues. Additionally, as oxide layers formed on traditional silicon photocatalysts during reactions, it negatively impacted hydrogen production efficiency over time.
To overcome these obstacles, the research team developed a hybrid silicon photocatalyst by uniformly coating nickel-doped graphene quantum dots onto the surface of 2 to 3 nm thick silicon flakes. The modified surface enabled significantly higher hydrogen production efficiency compared to conventional silicon photocatalysts — achieving an impressive rate of 14.2 mmol gcat−1 h−1 — a substantial improvement equating to approximately 28 times higher performance.
Furthermore, through oxidation reactions using biomass instead of water — an organic substance derived from biological sources — the hybrid silicon photocatalyst demonstrated its capability for producing high-value compounds alongside hydrogen production. The catalyst also maintained 98% of its original form, ensuring long-term stability.
Professor Ryu stated, “Previous research on hydrogen production has been limited to photocatalysts that absorb ultraviolet rays or involve toxic catalysts. Our non-toxic and cost-effective silicon photocatalyst is a significant advancement as it enables high-efficiency hydrogen production through superior solar absorption.”
Professor Park added, “The surface modification technique utilizing nickel-doped graphene quantum dots can be applied not only to silicon photocatalysts but also to various other types of photocatalysts, opening up new possibilities in energy applications.”
The study has been jointly participated by Yuri Choi (Research Assistant Professor, School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, UNIST) and Sungho Choi (Combined MS/Ph.D. Program of Advanced Materials Science, POSTECH). The findings of this study were published in Advanced Materials on July 27, 2023. This study has been supported by the grants through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT of Korea, as well as the Basic Science Research Program through the NRF funded by the Ministry of Education of Korea.
Mussels are among the ultimate superfoods, high in vitamin B12, omega-3 and great for the heart. Now, new research shows they are also likely to withstand marine heatwaves by adjusting their body functions.
In an experiment testing the impact of a marine heatwave on large and small mussels, both sizes came through with flying colours, demonstrating their remarkable ability to cope with environmental stress, despite short term physiological changes.
Researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and University of South Australia tested vital signs of mussels exposed to three weeks of very warm ocean temperatures. Although their heart and clearance* rates increased with the elevated temperatures, within a week of the heatwave ending, their vital signs had returned to normal.
“This bodes well for their survival under future marine heatwaves, with these events predicted to increase in severity, frequency and duration,” says UniSA environmental lecturer Dr Laura Falkenberg, who was involved in the study.
“We expected to see some marked impacts of increased ocean temperature on their vital signs, including survival, heart and respiratory rates, but to our surprise they were extremely resilient, persisting through — and recovering after — the marine heatwave.”
Mussels are vital to marine ecosystems, playing critical roles in recycling nutrients and improving water quality in coastal systems by filtering large volumes of water while feeding, which helps to keep the water clean.
They are also an important source of protein for humans, in particular iron, B-12 and omega-3, containing over nine times the amount of B-12 than beef and five times more than salmon.
Dr Falkenberg says very few studies to date have looked at the capacity of organisms to recover from marine heatwaves, and which factors may affect this capacity.
The mussel Perna viridisis abundant in the Indo Pacific region, which is projected to experience a higher increase in marine heatwaves in coming decades, relative to other latitudes.
In the experiment, large and small Asian green mussels were collected from Tolo Harbour in Hong Kong, kept in laboratory conditions in tanks filled with seawater, and fed a phytoplankton diet. Half of the tanks were controls and the remainder were experimental tanks, where the temperature was increased by 1ºC each day until it reached almost 27 degrees Celsius.
Elevated temperatures were maintained for three weeks, and the biological responses of the mussels were measured in the final two days. The temperatures of the heatwave tanks were then lowered to the control temperature and the mussels monitored over the next week.
Following the heatwave recovery period, all physiological traits — including heart rate, temperature and clearance rate — returned to normal levels, showing that the mussels’ long-term functioning was unaffected by heatwave conditions.
“Mussels have limited strategies to regulate their core body temperature, and adjusting their heart rate and clearance rate may be the primary ways they can respond,” says Dr Falkenberg.
Researchers say the ability of mussels to adjust their cardiac activity could help maintain normal functioning of the circulatory system, which is closely associated with feeding, growth and reproduction.
Notably, their ability to increase clearance rates under elevated temperatures may also benefit other organisms in coastal systems, as marine heatwaves often drive algal and plankton blooms.
Reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere will take more than cutting emissions — we will also need to capture and store the excessive volumes of already-emitted carbon. In an opinion paper publishing in the journal Trends in Plant Science on September 21, a team of plant scientists argue that arid lands such as deserts could be one answer to the carbon-capture problem.
The authors argue that we could transform arid ecosystems into efficient carbon-capture systems with improved soil health, enhanced photosynthetic efficiency, and larger root biomass by engineering ideal combinations of plants, soil microbes, and soil type to facilitate a naturally occurring biogeochemical process called the oxalate-carbonate pathway to create below-ground carbon sinks.
“Re-greening deserts by restoration of ecosystem functions, including carbon sequestration, should be the preferential approach,” writes the research team, led by senior author and plant scientist Heribert Hirt of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. “The advantage of reclaiming arid regions for re-greening and carbon sequestration is that they do not compete with lands used in agriculture and food production.”
The method takes advantage of arid-adapted plants that produce oxalates — ions containing carbon and oxygen that might ring a bell if you’re unlucky enough to suffer from kidney stones or gout. Some soil microbes use oxalates as their sole carbon source, and in doing so, they excrete carbonate molecules into the soil. Carbonate usually breaks down quickly, but if these plant-microbe systems are grown in alkaline- and calcium-rich soils, the carbonate reacts with calcium to form stable deposits of calcium carbonate.
Carbon naturally cycles between the atmosphere, oceans, and terrestrial ecosystems, but human actions have resulted in the accumulation of excess CO2 in the atmosphere. Even if we can reduce CO2 emissions, the researchers write that the .” ..climate effects of elevated CO2 will remain irreversible for at least 1,000 years unless CO2 can be sequestered from the atmosphere.”
Trees are considered an ideal system for carbon capture, but reforestation competes directly with agriculture for arable land. In contrast, arid lands, which constitute approximately one-third of terrestrial surfaces, are not utilized for agriculture.
Currently, arid ecosystems support very little plant life, with the lack of water being the biggest limiting factor. However, some plants have adapted to arid life by evolving different mechanisms for coping with the lack of water and extreme temperatures. Some arid-adapted plants have special root systems for reaching deep into the soil to tap hidden water sources while others use different forms of photosynthesis that allow them to minimize water loss during the hottest parts of the day. Yet others, so-called “oxalogenic” plants, produce large amounts of oxalates that they can convert into water during times of drought. Some of the carbon from these oxalates is deposited below-ground as carbon deposits when oxalogenic plants are grown under certain conditions, and it’s this mechanism that the authors want to exploit for carbon sequestration.
“Overall, in this form of carbon sequestration, one out of every sixteen photosynthetically fixed carbon atoms might be sequestered into carbonates,” the authors write.
Amplifying this naturally occurring biogeochemical process in arid lands could convert these currently unproductive and degraded ecosystems into carbon sinks with healthier soil and plants, the authors say. They suggest beginning with “fertility islands” — small pockets of re-greened habitat from which the plants and microbes can spread to form a carpet of vegetation.
The authors estimate that these approaches could result in significant increases in both plant and soil carbon sequestration in less than ten years. However, they note that the success and speed of the proposed method will depend on the rate of plant growth (which tends to be slow under water-scarce conditions) and .” ..will also depend on the financial and political means to apply this technology in various arid countries.”
A new form of agricultural pest control could one day take root — one that treats crop infestations deep under the ground in a targeted manner with less pesticide.
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed nanoparticles, fashioned from plant viruses, that can deliver pesticide molecules to soil depths that were previously unreachable. This advance could potentially help farmers effectively combat parasitic nematodes that plague the root zones of crops, all while minimizing costs, pesticide use and environmental toxicity.
Controlling infestations caused by root-damaging nematodes has long been a challenge in agriculture. One reason is that the types of pesticides used against nematodes tend to cling to the top layers of soil, making it tough to reach the root level where nematodes wreak havoc. As a result, farmers often resort to applying excessive amounts of pesticide, as well as water to wash pesticides down to the root zone. This can lead to contamination of soil and groundwater.
To find a more sustainable and effective solution, a team led by Nicole Steinmetz, a professor of nanoengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and founding director of the Center for Nano-ImmunoEngineering, developed plant virus nanoparticles that can transport pesticide molecules deep into the soil, precisely where they are needed. The work is detailed in a paper published in Nano Letters.
Steinmetz’s team drew inspiration from nanomedicine, where nanoparticles are being created for targeted drug delivery, and adapted this concept to agriculture. This idea of repurposing and redesigning biological materials for different applications is also a focus area of the UC San Diego Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), of which Steinmetz is a co-lead.
“We’re developing a precision farming approach where we’re creating nanoparticles for targeted pesticide delivery,” said Steinmetz, who is the study’s senior author. “This technology holds the promise of enhancing treatment effectiveness in the field without the need to increase pesticide dosage.”
The star of this approach is the tobacco mild green mosaic virus, a plant virus that has the ability to move through soil with ease. Researchers modified these virus nanoparticles, rendering them noninfectious to crops by removing their RNA. They then mixed these nanoparticles with pesticide solutions in water and heated them, creating spherical virus-like nanoparticles packed with pesticides through a simple one-pot synthesis.
This one-pot synthesis offers several advantages. First, it is cost-effective, with just a few steps and a straightforward purification process. The result is a more scalable method, paving the way toward a more affordable product for farmers, noted Steinmetz. Second, by simply packaging the pesticide inside the nanoparticles, rather than chemically binding it to the surface, this method preserves the original chemical structure of the pesticide.
“If we had used a traditional synthetic method where we link the pesticide molecules to the nanoparticles, we would have essentially created a new compound, which will need to go through a whole new registration and regulatory approval process,” said study first author Adam Caparco, a postdoctoral researcher in Steinmetz’s lab. “But since we’re just encapsulating the pesticide within the nanoparticles, we’re not changing the active ingredient, so we won’t need to get new approval for it. That could help expedite the translation of this technology to the market.”
Moreover, the tobacco mild green mosaic virus is already approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for use as an herbicide to control an invasive plant called the tropical soda apple. This existing approval could further streamline the path from lab to market.
The researchers conducted experiments in the lab to demonstrate the efficacy of their pesticide-packed nanoparticles. The nanoparticles were watered through columns of soil and successfully transported the pesticides to depths of at least 10 centimeters. The solutions were collected from the bottom of the soil columns and were found to contain the pesticide-packed nanoparticles. When the researchers treated nematodes with these solutions, they eliminated at least half of the population in a petri dish.
While the researchers have not yet tested the nanoparticles on nematodes lurking beneath the soil, they note that this study marks a significant step forward.
“Our technology enables pesticides meant to combat nematodes to be used in the soil,” said Caparco. “These pesticides alone cannot penetrate the soil. But with our nanoparticles, they now have soil mobility, can reach the root level, and potentially kill the nematodes.”
Future research will involve testing the nanoparticles on actual infested plants to assess their effectiveness in real-world agricultural scenarios. Steinmetz’s lab will perform these follow-up studies in collaboration with the U.S. Horticultural Research Laboratory. Her team has also established plans for an industry partnership aimed at advancing the nanoparticles into a commercial product.
A new U.N. treaty to protect the world’s oceans was signed by 67 countries on Wednesday, another step in efforts to reverse the damage done to fragile marine environments by overfishing and other human activities.
The global pact to conserve biodiversity on the high seas was finally agreed in March and formally adopted by the United Nations in June. It is seen as a crucial tool to meet a target agreed last year to protect 30% of the earth’s land and sea by 2030, known as “30 by 30.”
Despite the nearly 70 signatures at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, the treaty needs to be ratified on a national level before it goes into effect.
“With the signature of the High Seas Treaty, we can safeguard the ocean from human pressures, and get closer to our objective of protecting at least 30% of the planet by 2030,” said European Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius, calling the treaty “our constitution for the ocean.”
Mads Christensen, interim executive director of Greenpeace International, described the signings as a “powerful signal” which should help maintain momentum to meet the “30 by 30” target.
“But this signing is a purely symbolic moment,” he said. “Now politicians must bring the treaty home and ensure it is ratified in record time.”
The agreement will create ocean sanctuaries where fishing will be prohibited, and also ensure human activity on the high seas is subject to environmental impact assessments.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimates that $500 million in funding will be required to kickstart the treaty, and a special implementation and capacity-building fund could require another $100 million per year.
Threats to the ocean environment have been mounting in recent years as a result of overfishing as well as rising temperatures, and new threats could also emerge from ocean-bed mining and the use of geoengineering technologies to boost the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide.
Environmental groups say the treaty must be brought fully into effect by 2025 at the latest to ensure the “30-by-30″ protection target is reached.”The ocean can’t wait, and with the treaty being in the making for the better part of the past 20 years, there is absolutely no time to waste,” said Jessica Battle, an ocean expert with the Worldwide Fund for Nature.
Pollution from treated and untreated sewage is the greatest threat to river biodiversity, causing more damage than runoff from farms, according to research.
There is a need for more regulation of water companies and improvements at their treatment plans to protect rivers, say the authors of the study.
The research from the University of Oxford was released on World Rivers Day. No river in England passes tests for chemical or biological pollution, and government targets to improve the water quality in rivers will not be met.
“Improvements to wastewater plants should be implemented along with more regulations. These efforts are crucial in safeguarding the integrity and safety of our rivers – fundamental elements of both ecosystems and human wellbeing,” said the lead author, Dr Dania Albini, of Oxford’s biology department.
Treated sewage released by water companies into rivers and raw effluent that is dumped in rivers via storm overflows is the primary driver of increased nutrients, algae and sewage fungus in rivers, according to the study.
Sewage discharge radically alters plant, animal and microbe communities and increases the abundance of harmful species. While runoff from farmland has negative impacts on river water quality, the research reveals that sewage discharge into rivers has a greater impact on water quality and the animals and plants that live in rivers.
The findings were published in the journals Global Change Biology and Ecological Solutions and Evidence.
Albini said: “Our study highlights the disproportionate impact that sewage discharge has on river quality, presenting an urgent need for a comprehensive action plan targeting the sewage discharge problem.”
Sewage from households and businesses is treated by water companies at treatment plants and then discharged into rivers. Raw sewage is also discharged via storm overflows, but this should only take place in exceptional circumstances. Water companies are at the centre of a criminal investigation by the Environment Agency and an inquiry by the financial regulator Ofwat into failures in the way they run their treatment plants.
James Wallace, of the UK-based charity River Action, said: “This important research demonstrates yet again the damage from unregulated water companies and agriculture. In addition to the catastrophic impact on wildlife from nutrient pollution, the public should be aware that sewage systems do not remove dangerous bacteria such as E.coli and intestinal enterococci from treated sewage.
“When will the government make water companies and farms clean up their act, especially in places where human lives and sensitive protected habitats are threatened?”
Separate research by Dr Leon Barron, part of the Environmental Research Group at Imperial College, which involved hundreds of samples taken from 14 waterways in Greater London over three years, reveals that 21 compounds were detected that posed a potential risk to the environment in freshwater ecosystems. The pollutants included antibiotics, pain medication and pet parasite medications, which contain neonicotinoids.
The study showed that water companies’ treatment plants and combined sewer overflows, which release raw sewage and runoff, were the main sources of chemical risks to rivers overall.
The team found that smaller rivers feeding into the Thames were most affected by wastewater pollution.
The research compared sampling taken during Covid lockdowns with those taken when society opened up again. Barron, a senior author of the research, said it was the largest study of a heavily urbanised river system and provided uniquely detailed insights into London’s water quality.
Guy Woodward, a professor of ecology in the department of life sciences at Imperial, and a co-author of the paper, said: “This … picks up on several [chemicals] that are at potentially harmful concentrations for wildlife, but which have seemingly been overlooked in traditional surveys of our water quality in urban areas at this resolution.”
The New Orleans mayor, LaToya Cantrell, signed an emergency declaration for the city on Friday amid concerns about saltwater from the the Gulf of Mexico that has been creeping up the drought-hit Mississippi River in Louisiana.
The declaration came amid concerns the saltwater, which is impacting the river because it is at such low levels, could impact the drinking water of thousands of residents in the next few weeks
The Louisiana governor, John Bel Edwards, said the state would be requesting an emergency declaration from the federal government in the next couple of days as well to get federal funds and agencies involved.
For those who rely on the Mississippi River for drinking water, the saltwater intrusion is a potential health risk, as high concentrations of salt in drinking water may cause people to develop increased blood pressure and corrode drinking water infrastructure.
The saltwater has already entered the drinking water of communities south of New Orleans – from Empire Bridge to Venice, Louisiana – making the water undrinkable for about 2,000 residents and causing water outages at local schools. As the saltwater moves upriver, it could affect the drinking water for another 20,000 people in Belle Chasse. After that it could reach the drinking water intake for the New Orleans community of Algiers, across the river from the French Quarter.
To slow the progression of the saltwater, the army corps of engineers constructed an underwater barrier downriver from New Orleans in July.
On Friday, the corps released an updated timeline of the saltwater intrusion in the river that includes the delay added by the underwater barrier. With the barrier in place, the saltwater would not reach the Belle Chasse drinking water intake until 13 October and the Algiers intake until 22 October.
Governor Edwards said his team is working with the four parishes at the end of the Mississippi River that are already affected by the low river water. “I found out today that the forecast is for above average amounts of precipitation in winter. But that’s still several months away,” he said. “And what we need most in Louisiana right now, for the Mississippi River, we need rain further up north in the Ohio Valley.”
Colonel Cullen Jones of the army corps of engineers said that 10in of rain would be needed across the entire Mississippi Valley to increase the Mississippi River flow high enough to push back the seawater.
The mouth of the Mississippi River is below sea level. Because saltwater is denser than freshwater it is moving underneath the freshwater along the bottom of the river in a wedge shape.
The lowest Mississippi River levels recorded in modern history were in 1988, when seawater entered the water systems of New Orleans for a couple of days before it was pushed back down the river by freshwater. But forecasts show the current day low river levels could become more severe, potentially allowing saltwater to remain in the system from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, said Colonel Jones.
The corps is also working on a plan to deliver 15m gallons to the southern parishes by next week. Together the water treatment systems that could be contaminated with saltwater by 24 October use 36m gallons of water per day.
The barrier was intended to slow the upstream movement of the saltwater, but the salt wedge has overtopped the barrier. Similar barriers were constructed in 1988, 2012 and 2022. This is the first time the barrier has needed to be built in back-to-back years. Last year, the barrier wasn’t overtopped, he added.
Communities along the river are keeping a close eye on the upstream movement of the saltwater wedge and testing the salinity levels near their water system intakes, said Dr Joseph Kanter, the state health officer and medical director for the Louisiana department of health. “Everyone along the river knows where the wedge is and when it’s approaching. That’s not going to be a surprise,” he said.
While salt is not a federally regulated contaminant, it could be a health concern for people who are on low salt diets and for those who are pregnant. The World Health Organization’s drinking water guideline suggests that 200mg of sodium a liter is the threshold at which most people will not want to drink the water because of taste. When saltwater is pumped through a water distribution system it can cause pipes to corrode, potentially leaching heavy metals from the pipes and pipe fittings into drinking water.
But it is difficult to predict which metals might leach from pipes, as distribution systems are all different and some do not have full maps of their systems. “So, a hallmark of the response is going to be frequent testing of the water that is going through the water systems distribution network,” Kanter said.
The corps of engineers is exploring barging river water from upriver to areas being affected by the saltwater intrusion and smaller communities south of Louisiana are sourcing reverse osmosis devices capable of desalinating water, Kanter said. But those measures would probably not be able to replace the amount of water used by New Orleans, which has a population of nearly 370,000 people.
Kanter reiterated that the current estimates are worst-case scenarios.
Multiple days of rainfall in the Missouri and Ohio River Basins would be necessary to increase the freshwater flow of the Mississippi River, said Julie Lesko, a senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service New Orleans/Baton Rouge office. “When we look at what could happen over a two-week period we’re not seeing anything significant that would make its way down river to alleviate the problems,” she said.
Coastal communities across the US are facing similar challenges with saltwater intrusion, said Allison Lassiter, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania focused on urban water management.
Desalination systems have limitations because they are expensive and don’t produce a lot of water. “This will be a difficult nut to crack,” she said.
Sea level rise will make the conditions that allow saltwater intrusion into the Mississippi River more likely in the future, said Soni Pradhanang, an associate professor of hydrology and water quality at the University of Rhode Island. Climate change is also expected to exacerbate droughts by making them longer and more frequent. “We’re only going to see this happening more,” she said. “Sea level rise will lead to increased salinity as more of this seawater pushes up into the estuaries and inland.”
Montana’s legislature designated $3.7 million this spring to remove lead from school drinking water supplies, then the state received $565,000 more on Aug. 1 from the $50 billion federal infrastructure package aiming to improve water systems nationally.
But even with these two new pools of money intended to last two years, the state’s schools may struggle to remove all but the most dangerous sources of lead, considering about half the schools that tested their water between July 2020 and February 2022 found high lead levels. Medical experts say no amount of lead is safe to ingest.
“When you start replacing faucets and drinking fountains in the hundreds of schools that we have in Montana, that gets eaten up pretty quickly,” said Democratic state Rep. Paul Tuss, who added the state funding to an infrastructure bill passed this spring.
If the total were divided evenly among the approximately 590 schools that need to meet the state’s new lead testing rules, each school would receive less than $8,000 from the state to test and upgrade its faucets, pipes and water fountains. The state already knows that 110 schools have had at least one water fixture with lead levels of 15 parts per billion or higher, three times the level that requires action under Montana rules.
Most schools with lead levels over the state limit could address their “exceedances” with the state money, according to state Department of Environmental Quality spokesperson Moira Davin. “Our plan is to address as many schools as possible with this funding,” she said.
But part of the challenge for Montana is that it doesn’t yet know how extensive a problem its schools have. More than a fifth of the state’s schools facing the new rules — 129 facilities — hadn’t completed any sampling as of Aug. 3, said Greg Montgomery, the director of the department’s Lead in Schools program. And replacing a single school’s pipes can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Ronnie Levin, an environmental health instructor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said the money Montana has in hand is not a lot when it comes to fixing pipes but that it could be enough to get filters on all the faucets.
“We are not talking about solving the whole problem here,” said Levin, who worked on lead exposure during her nearly 40 years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Lead is particularly harmful to children and can lead to brain and nervous system damage and slowed development and growth. It typically gets into drinking water in schools through piping or fixtures. A 2020 state rule requires schools to test water supplies every three years. If lead concentrations surpass 5 parts per billion, fixtures must be addressed — and shut off if higher than 15 ppb.
Jessica Reyes, an economics professor at Amherst College, said prioritizing fountains or pipes with high lead levels after a “first draw” test could help a lot. The test measures lead in water the first time a faucet is turned on for the day, after the water’s been sitting in a pipe all night. That sample provides the best data to pinpoint the greatest risks, she said.
Running all faucets for a few minutes before kids get to school is quite protective for kids, Reyes added, because the quantity of lead diminishes as the water runs. But Reyes likes to imagine a kindergartner who gets to school early for free breakfast and drinks from a water fountain before anyone in the building clears the pipes.
“Everything kids need to grow — lead is the opposite of those,” Reyes said.
Montana officials will decide how to distribute the money from the legislature, reimbursing schools for costs such as installing new faucets, water filters, plumbing and water bottle filling stations. The federal grant, meanwhile, will be used for covering costs related to testing, Montgomery said.
Schools will have to participate in the state’s Lead in Schools program by sampling their drinking water to get any of the state funding, he said, and they won’t be able to use the money on projects completed before the state bill was signed into law.
Montgomery said the amount available to schools would depend on whether they have any fixtures over the “action level,” or fixtures with lead concentrations over 5 ppb. Funding will be prioritized on a first-come, first-served basis, he said.
Even if a school doesn’t have high samples of lead in its test results, Montgomery said, it could seek money to install water bottle filling stations with filters. Schools could also use the money for larger projects such as replacing piping, but, Montgomery said, the state will set a limit on how much each school can get. And, he said, it’s unlikely the money will be able to cover something like a $100,000 pipe replacement project.
The goal is to make money available to all schools, regardless of size, and ensure a couple of schools aren’t “gobbling” the entire amount, Montgomery said. That means schools with extensive issues will likely need to pick which areas to fix.
“We want to make sure the small schools have equal footing as the large schools,” Montgomery said.
Many Montana schools have already launched remediation projects after receiving high lead results.
One sink at Skyview High School in Billings had one of the highest levels of lead detected in schools across the state. Scott Reiter, the executive director of facilities for Billings Public Schools, said the sink was in a control room in the auditorium and people rarely used it. After the results came in, the fixture was removed to make the sink unusable.
On a larger scale, he said, all cold-water piping for drinking and sinks was replaced at Rimrock Learning Center in Billings last summer. Reiter said the school had been remodeled and all fixtures replaced about five years ago, so when lead was detected all over the school, it was clear it wasn’t just one fixture.
“We knew that it had to be in the lines,” Reiter said.
Reiter said the school district used leftover money from a 2013 elementary school district bond to replace Rimrock’s pipes, which he estimated cost $100,000.
While Reiter said he was disappointed costs from the Rimrock pipe replacements and other projects that have already happened couldn’t be reimbursed retroactively, he welcomed the state’s additional funding. “Any help to the schools for something like this is great,” he said.
The Great Falls Public Schools district also exemplifies how extensive and expensive such work can be. The district used $19,511 from an earlier $40,000 state allocation for drinking fountains, water bottle fillers and filters across schools in the district, said Brian Patrick, its director of business services and operations. He said the district also got 783 tests covered by the state, each costing $25.
His district used a bond passed in 2017 to fund a pipe replacement at Lewis and Clark Elementary School, where 23 tests came in at 5 ppb or higher. The pipes were replaced last summer, Patrick said, costing $411,252.
PITTSBURGH (Reuters) – The mining industry is working to boost freshwater recycling while also developing direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies as it races to reinvent how the battery metal is produced for the green energy transition, executives said.
The surging global demand for lithium has sparked widespread interest in DLE technologies, which use less land and can operate far faster than hard rock mining and brine evaporation ponds – the traditional ways to process the white metal.
Some types of DLE technologies, though, require 180 metric tons or more of water to produce a single metric ton of lithium, a usage that has sparked controversy in arid regions seeking to conserve potable water and one that has offset DLE’s purported promise of curbing the mining industry’s large water use.
Now, DLE developers are racing to boost freshwater recycling as they fine tune technology, part of a push to ensure they do not lose community support before their industry has a chance to go fully commercial.
“If we cannot do a good job of recycling that water and reducing our water footprint, we’re going to get crushed,” John Burba, executive chairman of International Battery Metals, told the Reuters Events Industry Transition conference in Pittsburgh this week. “DLE is a very water-intensive process.”
Burba told the conference that IBAT – which has held talks to license its DLE technology with Exxon Mobil, Chevron and others – recovers 98.5% of the freshwater used during its lithium production process, and is aiming to boost that further.
Privately-held EnergyX, which counts General Motors as an investor, said it can recover as much as 90% of its freshwater, a number its scientists are working to increase.
“Getting it down to maybe five or 10 or 15 (metric) tons of freshwater per ton of lithium is kind of where you want to be,” said EnergyX CEO Teague Egan.
Controlled Thermal Resources, which is developing a geothermal lithium project in California’s Salton Sea to supply GM and Stellantis, recycles a gallon of water at least eight times and will produce water via steam from its geothermal power process, said CEO Rod Colwell.
“How many times we can recycle? That’s really the big question,” said Colwell.
E3 Lithium, which is backed by Exxon’s Imperial Oil, began testing three DLE technologies last month in Alberta and aims to install water recycling facilities as it goes commercial, said CEO Chris Doornbos.
“You end up having a small water treatment facility with your processing facility so they can reuse that water over and over and over again,” said Doornbos.
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Each of the developers said they expect at least one DLE technology to commercially launch by early 2025, a step that is expected to boost the entire industry.
“DLE is a tool that is growing and improving to allow us to unlock brines that might have been uneconomic in the past,” said Emily Hersh, CEO of privately-held mining explorer Luna Lithium.
Whereas DLE once had many questioning if it even could replace traditional lithium mining, those worries have now faded, executives said.
“The question of ‘if DLE works’ is gone now. It’s an engineering challenge. It’s not a technological challenge,” said E3’s Doornbos.
The push to curb water use, executives said, should in time help assuage some concerns from the EV industry about mining’s environmental impact amid the rising demand for lithium, executives added.
“Every single (automaker) realizes that lithium is the limiting factor in them producing electric vehicles,” said EnergyX’s Egan.
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