By University of Utah

 Grand Prismatic Spring, Midway Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park. (From arstechnica)

While the crowds swarm around Old Faithful to wait for its next eruption, a little pool just north of Yellowstone National Park’s most famous geyser is quietly showing off its own unique activity, also at more-or-less regular showtimes. Instead of erupting in a towering geyser, though, Doublet Pool cranks up the bass every 20 to 30 minutes by thumping. The water vibrates and the ground shakes.

Doublet Pool’s regular thumping is more than just an interesting tourist attraction. A new study led by University of Utah researchers shows that the interval between episodes of thumping reflects the amount of energy heating the pool at the bottom, as well as in indication of how much heat is being lost through the surface. Doublet Pool, the authors found, is Yellowstone’s thumping thermometer.

“By studying Doublet Pool, we are hoping to gain knowledge on the dynamic hydrothermal processes that can potentially be applied to understand what controls geyser eruptions,” said Fan-Chi Lin, an associate professor in the department of geology and geophysics at the U and a study co-author, “and also less predictable and more hazardous hydrothermal explosions.”

The study is published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Not exactly like a geyser

Doublet Pool is, as the name implies, a pair of hydrothermal pools connected by a small neck. It would fit comfortably in one half of a tennis court. It’s situated on Geyser Hill in Yellowstone National Park, across the Firehole River from the hotels, visitor centers and parking lots that surround Old Faithful.

“We knew Doublet Pool thumps every 20-30 minutes,” Lin said, “but there was not much previous knowledge on what controls the variation. In fact, I don’t think many people actually realize the thumping interval varies. People pay more attention to geysers.”

The thumping, Lin said, which lasts about 10 minutes, is caused by bubbles in the plumbing system that feeds water, heated by a magma system beneath Yellowstone, to Doublet Pool. When those bubbles of water vapor reach the cool upper reaches of the hydrothermal conduit, they collapse suddenly. Thump.

A similar process happens in geysers and excites “hydrothermal tremor,” Lin said, but occurs deeper in the hydrothermal system, at depths of about 30-60 ft and ends with the geyser releasing pressure through a narrow opening as an eruption. Doublet Pool does not have a plumbing structure that enables pressure accumulation and hence no eruption occurs. Also, scientific instruments placed in and around the pool aren’t at any risk for being regularly blown out.

So, to better understand how hydrothermal systems work, Lin and his colleagues, including Cheng-Nan Liu, Jamie Farrell and Sin-Mei Wu from the U and collaborators from the University of California, Berkeley and Yellowstone National Park, set up instruments called geophones around Doublet Pool in seven deployments between 2015 and 2021. In winter 2021 and spring 2022, with the permission of the National Park Service, they lowered temperature and water-level sensors into the pool itself. Then they watched, waited and listened.

Like blowing on a pot of pasta

The researchers focused on the silence interval, or the time between periods of thumping. They found that the silence interval varied both year-to-year and also hour-to-hour or day-to-day. Their results suggest that different processes of adding or removing heat to the hydrothermal system are behind the variation.

In November 2016, the silence interval was around 30 minutes. But by September 2018, that interval had been cut in half to around 13 minutes, and by November 2021, the interval was back up to around 20 minutes.

What else was happening on Geyser Hill during those same times? On September 15, 2018, Ear Spring, which is 200 feet (60 m) northwest of Doublet Pool, erupted for the first time since 1957. After the eruption, the water in Doublet Pool boiled.

Yellowstone’s hydrothermal system is like an Instant Pot, building up heat and pressure leading up to eruptions of geysers and other features. The unusual behavior of Ear Spring, Doublet Pool and other features suggests that in 2018 the heat under Geyser Hill may have been turned up more than usual. By 2021, like an Instant Pot on Natural Release, that heat and pressure had subsided and the silence interval at Doublet Pool had recovered.

The researchers also noticed that silence intervals varied from day to day, and even hour to hour. When they compared the weather conditions with the silence intervals, they found that wind speed over the pools was correlated with the silence interval. When wind speed was higher, the interval was longer. Nature was blowing over the top of Doublet Pool, cooling it off.

The team is still working to understand how the blowing wind at the surface of the pool impacts the heat at the bottom, but it’s clear that the wind removes heat energy from the water, just like blowing over a hot drink — or a pot of pasta about to boil over — cools it off.

“Right now, we are treating the pool as one whole system, which means energy taken away from the surface makes it harder for the system to accumulate enough energy to thump,” Lin said. “One possibility is that the pool is actively convecting so the cooling near the surface can affect the bottom of the pool in a relatively short time scale.”

Heat inputs and outputs

Using principles of heat transfer, the authors calculated the amount of heat and the heating rate needed to initiate thumping at Doublet Pool. Think again about blowing on a pot of pasta. You can prevent boiling over if you are removing heat (through blowing) at the same rate the heat is entering the pot.

“And as we know how to calculate the heat being removed from the wind,” Lin said, “we can estimate the heating rate at the base.”

The heating rate for Doublet Pool works out to around 3-7 megawatts of energy. For comparison, Lin said, it would take about 100 household furnaces burning at the same time to heat up Doublet Pool enough to thump. (This is also equivalent to more than $5,000 worth of energy daily, which highlights the potential of geothermal energy.)

Knowing that heating rate, scientists can use the silence interval as a measurement of how much heat is coming into the pool, since more heat means a shorter interval.

“A better understanding of the energy budget,” Lin said, “will also improve our understanding of how much energy from the Yellowstone volcano is released through these hydrothermal features.”

FORM MORE INFORMATION: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230308171645.htm

By Science Daily

Floodwaters course through a neighborhood in Merced, California, on January 10, as Bear Creek overflowed its banks following days of rain, leaving dozens of homes and vehicles surrounded by floodwaters (Image from Vox)

Annual damage caused by flooding in the UK could increase by more than a fifth over the next century due to climate change unless all international pledges to reduce carbon emissions are met, according to new research.

The study, led by the University of Bristol and global water risk modelling leader Fathom, reveals the first-ever dataset to assess flood hazard using the most recent Met Office climate projections which factor in the likely impact of climate change.

Its findings show the forecasted annual increase in national direct flood losses, defined as physical damage to property and businesses, due to climate change in the UK can be kept below 5% above recent historical levels. But this is only on the proviso that all countries fulfil the ambitious pledges they signed up to at COP26 and also that countries, including the UK, which made further Net Zero commitments, actually achieve these on time and in full.

If the COP26 and Net Zero promises are not collectively met, the study shows the annual cost of flooding in the UK over the next century could grow by between 13% and 23%, depending on different levels of climate extreme projections.

Lead author Paul Bates, Professor of Hydrology and Chairman of Fathom, said: “For the first time this flood model gives us a more accurate and detailed picture of the impact of climate change on the risk of flooding in the future across the UK. The results are a timely warning to the country’s political leaders and business sector that global commitments to significantly reduce carbon emissions must be taken very seriously, and ultimately take effect, in order to mitigate increased losses due to flooding.”

The sophisticated data has also highlighted the places in the UK where risks will increase most rapidly, even under the best-case scenario where global warming is limited to 1.8 degrees C. These include South East England, South Wales, North West England and Central Scotland, especially densely populated cities such as London, Cardiff, Manchester, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, where damage increases of more than 25% are possible.

Conversely, the new model indicated flood hazards in North-East and Central England as well as Eastern and Northern Scotland change very little from the present day.

“Although the most optimistic climate scenarios see only modest increases in flood losses at a national level, these new data demonstrate how this conceals dramatic variations across the country, with some places seeing large changes and others very little. This is a result of changing patterns of future rainfall, river flow and sea level rise, and this leads to the regional differences we predict,” said Professor Bates.

“We found that flooding increases most in places where risk is already high now, so the best thing we can do to prepare for the impact of climate change is to strengthen flood management in currently at-risk areas, and this will bring immediate economic and social benefits as well.”

The modelled estimates of historical flood risk, which are based on actual river flow, rainfall, and tide-surge observations as well as climate model projections, match well with data on flood losses from the Association of British Insurers, and shed new light on the financial toll of flooding. Previous studies by other research groups have already shown that historical UK economic losses due to flooding were three times less than the Government’s estimates, but this is the first time the observed losses have been replicated and corroborated by a computer model.

The team of researchers plan to produce analysis for other countries across the world, furthering our understanding of how climate change is likely to affect flood risk globally.

Co-author Dr Oliver Wing, Chief Research Officer at Fathom and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, said: “This study, which harnesses new data and the very latest modelling techniques, validates Fathom’s UK Flood Map and has given a new level of insight into the impact of climate change on flooding in future.

“The modelling provides clear evidence that flood risk needs to be a bigger international priority and that current governance doesn’t go far enough. While the majority of the nation’s future flood risk already exists today, it is strongly in the UK’s interest to exercise leadership in global carbon emission reduction efforts, both by example and as part of global diplomatic initiatives.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230307073213.htm

By ScienceDaily

Herbicides coming out of an irrigation pipe (From: https://www.ccof.org/blog/herbicides-irrigation-water)

Researchers in the Oregon State University College of Science have developed a dual-purpose catalyst that purifies herbicide-tainted water while also producing hydrogen.

The project, which included researchers from the OSU College of Engineering and HP Inc. is important because water pollution is a major global challenge, and hydrogen is a clean, renewable fuel.

Findings of the study, which explored photoactive catalysts, were published today in the journal ACS Catalysis.

“We can combine oxidation and reduction into a single process to achieve an efficient photocatalytic system,” OSU’s Kyriakos Stylianou said. “Oxidation happens via a photodegradation reaction, and reduction through a hydrogen evolution reaction.”

A catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change.

Photocatalysts are materials that absorb light to reach a higher energy level and can use that energy to break down organic contaminants through oxidation. Among photocatalysts’ many applications are self-cleaning coatings for stain- and odor-resistant walls, floors, ceilings and furniture.

Stylianou, assistant professor of chemistry, led the study, which involved titanium dioxide photocatalysts derived from a metal-organic framework, or MOF.

Made up of positively charged metal ions surrounded by organic “linker” molecules, MOFs are crystalline, porous materials with tunable structural properties and nanosized pores. They can be designed with a variety of components that determine the MOF’s properties.

Upon MOFs’ calcination — high heating without melting — semiconducting materials like titanium dioxide can be generated. Titanium dioxide is the most commonly used photocatalyst, and it’s found in the minerals anatase, rutile and brookite.

Stylianou and collaborators including Líney Árnadóttir of the OSU College of Engineering and William Stickle of HP discovered that anatase doped with nitrogen and sulfur was the best “two birds, one stone” photocatalyst for simultaneously producing hydrogen and degrading the heavily used herbicide glyphosate.

Glyphosate, also known as N-phosphonomethyl glycine or PMG, has been widely sprayed on agricultural fields over the last 50 years since first appearing on the market under the trade name Roundup.

“Only a small percentage of the total amount of PMG applied is taken up by crops, and the rest reaches the environment,” Stylianou said. “That causes concerns regarding the leaching of PMG into soil and groundwater, as well it should — contaminated water can be detrimental to the health of every living thing on the planet. And herbicides leaching into water channels are a primary cause of water pollution.”

Among an array of compounds in which hydrogen is found, water is the most common, and producing hydrogen by splitting water via photocatalysis is cleaner and more sustainable than the conventional method of deriving hydrogen — from natural gas via a carbon-dioxide-producing process known as methane-steam reforming.

Hydrogen serves many scientific and industrial purposes in addition to its energy-related roles. It’s used in fuel cells for cars, in the manufacture of many chemicals including ammonia, in the refining of metals and in the production of plastics.

“Water is a rich hydrogen source, and photocatalysis is a way of tapping into the Earth’s abundant solar energy for hydrogen production and environmental remediation,” Stylianou said. “We are showing that through photocatalysis, it is possible to produce a renewable fuel while removing organic pollutants, or converting them into useful products.”

The collaboration that included graduate student Emmanuel Musa, postdoctoral researcher Sumandeep Kaur and students Trenton Gallagher and Thao Mi Anthony also tested its photocatalyst against water tainted by two other often-used herbicides, glufosinate ammonium and 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid. It worked on water containing them as well — even water with those two compounds plus PMG.

The research was funded by the OSU Department of Chemistry, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230303105329.htm

By Leah Douglas

 Signage is seen at the headquarters of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 10, 2021

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency intends to update its water pollution rules for slaughterhouses for the first time in nearly 20 years, the agency announced on Wednesday, following a lawsuit from environmental groups arguing current standards are too weak.

Under the U.S. Clean Water Act, the EPA regulates wastewater discharge from meat and poultry plants into nearby lakes and streams. Neighboring communities have increasingly complained that the discharges have dirtied their environment and drinking water.

Slaughterhouses are the top emitting industry of phosphorus, a mineral that can asphyxiate fish by triggering explosive growth of algae and aquatic plants in water. They are also huge emitters of nitrogen, which can have a similar impact.

According to EPA documents, 74% of meat plants that discharge wastewater to surface waters are within one mile of low-income communities or communities of color.

The EPA’s move to update meat and poultry industry standards is part of a proposed consent decree that would settle litigation with community and environmental groups who sued the agency late last year over the issue.

“EPA’s plan to strengthen these rules is a win for downstream communities,” said Sarah Kula, an attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project, one of the groups that sued. EPA last updated the regulations in 2004.

Just 300 of the nation’s 7,000 meat and poultry slaughter and rendering plants are covered by existing water discharge standards, which apply to plants over a certain size that discharge directly into streams, lakes or oceans, according to EPA documents.

The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. Poultry and Egg Association and North American Meat Institute also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The proposed standards will be published by the end of 2023 and finalized by 2025.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2023-03-01/us-to-toughen-water-pollution-rules-for-meat-plants

University of California – Davis

from https://cals.arizona.edu/yavapai/anr/hort/byg/archive/understandingplantroots.html

Growing wheat in drought conditions may be easier in the future, thanks to new genetic research out of the University of California, Davis.

An international team of scientists found that the right number of copies of a specific group of genes can stimulate longer root growth, enabling wheat plants to pull water from deeper supplies. The resulting plants have more biomass and produce higher grain yield, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

The research provides novel tools to modify wheat root architecture to withstand low water conditions, said Gilad Gabay, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis and the first author on the paper.

Roots key to better yield in drought

“Roots play a very important role in plants,” he said. “The root absorbs the water and the nutrients to support plants’ growth. This finding is a useful tool to engineer root systems to improve yield under drought conditions in wheat.”

Much has been done to improve wheat production but losses from water stress can erase other improvements. Plants that can adapt to low water conditions but have increased yield will be key to growing enough food for a growing population in the face of global warming.

Until now, little has been known about the genes that affect the root structure of wheat. The discovery of the gene family — known as OPRIII — and that different copies of these genes affect root length is a significant step, said Distinguished Professor Jorge Dubcovsky, the project leader in the lab where Gabay works.

“The duplication of the OPRIII genes results in increased production of a plant hormone called Jasmonic acid that causes, among other processes, the accelerated production of lateral roots,” Dubcovsky said. “Different dosages of these genes can be used to obtain different roots.”

From genomics to breeding

To get longer roots, the team of researchers used CRISPR gene editing technology to eliminate some of the OPRIII genes that were duplicated in wheat lines with shorter roots. By contrast, increasing the copies of these genes caused shorter and more branched roots. But inserting a rye chromosome, which result in decreased OPRIII wheat genes, caused longer roots.

“Fine-tuning the dosage of the OPRIII genes can allow us to engineer root systems that are adapted to drought, to normal conditions, to different scenarios,” Gabay said.

Knowing the right combination of genes means researchers can search for wheat varieties that have those natural variations and breed for release to growers planting in low-water environments.

Junli Zhang, Germán Burguener and Tyson Howell from the Department of Plant Sciences contributed to the paper, as did researchers from China Agricultural University in China, Fudan University in China, Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland, Karolinska Institute in Sweden, National University of San Martin in Argentina, Technological Institute of Chascomús in Argentina, UC Berkeley, University of Haifa in Israel and UC Riverside Metabolomics Core Facility.

Funding for the researchers came from BARD US-Israel Agricultural Research and Development Fund, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and National Natural Science Foundation of China.

FOR MORE INFPRMATION: https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/earth_climate/water/

By Cath Turner

The Merced River is seen flowing downstream through Briceburg, California, U.S. February 15, 2023

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, California (Reuters) – After a winter of epic storms in California, Yosemite National Park’s famous waterfalls are in full flow, its reservoirs are brimming, and the snowpack in the surrounding Sierra Nevada Mountains is well above average.

In drought-stricken California, that is cause for celebration, but wildlife experts warn that weather extremes driven by climate change can also change habitats too quickly for wildlife to adapt. 

    “These extremes really take a toll on both the landscape, the wildlife and us,” Beth Pratt, California regional director for the National Wildlife Federation, told Reuters.

    Pratt has been studying Yosemite Valley wildlife for 25 years, including the more than 400 species of vertebrates that call the 1,200 square-mile (3,100 square-kilometer) park home.

One of the smaller residents Pratt surveys is the native California Newt, a small orange salamander with rough, grainy skin. In 2022, Pratt was concerned that low water levels in the Merced River, which flows through the park, would dry up seasonal ponds where the newts lay their eggs. This year, that concern has been washed away – she spotted some newts on a recent visit.

However, after a spate of deadly “atmospheric river” storms that unleashed widespread flooding, triggered mudslides and killed at least 20 people, her worry is that too much water is disrupting their ecosystem.

    “When you have a six-week period where they’re happening daily, the wildlife can’t shift their habitat that quickly,” she said. The storms also will not end California’s historic drought as virtually none of the storms reached the key Colorado River basin.

    In his 27 years as a Yosemite park ranger, Scott Gediman has never seen so much winter snow and water in the park.

    As well as delighting Yosemite visitors with thundering waterfalls, the deluge led to a bumper snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains, sometimes referred to as California’s “frozen reservoir.”

    According to a California Department of Water Resources manual survey conducted on Feb. 1, statewide snowpack was almost double the average for the time of year. The snowpack supplies around 30% of California’s water needs.

    “We kind of look at it like a bank,” Gediman said. “You bank all the snow up in the high country and then in the warm weather, the water comes down.”

    But climate change means climate extremes, and as California experiences more severe droughts and heat waves, its occasional wet years are expected to be excessively rainy.

    “Climate change isn’t something we’re waiting for,” Pratt said. “We’re experiencing it here, especially in the Sierra Nevada in California, we’re ground zero, just because of our Mediterranean climate.”

    Mediterranean climates with rainy winters and dry, hot summers are particularly vulnerable to climate change.

    “We don’t want people to come to Yosemite and not see Yosemite Falls in future years because we have no snowpack because of climate change,” Pratt said. “We want to preserve these places for both ourselves and the future. And climate is slowly destroying even the best protected places on the planet.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2023-03-01/extreme-yosemite-rain-eases-drought-but-disrupts-wildlife-habitats

By By Gloria Dickie

An aerial view of toxic blue-green algae bloom on the Baltic Sea coast at Tyreso near Stockholm, Sweden, June 25, 2020

LONDON (Reuters) – Huge blooms of phytoplankton — microscopic algae floating on the ocean’s surface — have become larger and more frequent along the world’s coastlines, according to new research, bringing benefits to fisheries but also potentially causing harm.

Between 2003 and 2020, coastal phytoplankton blooms increased by about 13% in extent, covering an additional 4 million square kilometres of the global ocean, the Nature study found. And the blooms occurred more often, up by 59% during that period.

While marine animals such as fish and whales eat phytoplankton, it can also prove toxic in large amounts, starving the ocean of oxygen and leading to “dead zones” that wreak chaos on the food chain and fisheries. A 2016 algal bloom near Chile, for example, cost salmon farms $800 million.

“Phytoplankton blooms can be really beneficial,” said study co-author Don Anderson who leads the U.S. National Office for Harmful Algal Blooms at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “Many of the really productive fisheries in the world’s ocean are driven by blooms. It’s important to understand why they might be changing.”

Scientists used satellite observations to look for blooms, programming a system to pick up the colour of the algae. However, they weren’t able to distinguish between benign and harmful blooms.

While some regions saw weaker blooms over the past two decades, including the California Current, blooms strengthened in the northern Gulf of Mexico and the East and South China Seas.

BEHIND THE BOOM

What’s driving the increase in phytoplankton blooms varies by region, scientists said. In some cases, warmer sea surface temperatures appear to be behind the boom. Changes in climate can also mess with ocean circulation, affecting mixing between ocean layers and how nutrients move around the ocean.

Human development also plays a role. Fertilizer runoff from agriculture can spike nutrient loads in the ocean, leading to blooms. Researchers also found that more aquaculutre around places like Finland, China, and Vietnam might be associated with more algal blooms.

Outside of fertilizer use and aquaculutre, “I would also be interested in relationships between population increases along coastal areas and bloom increase,” said Nandita Basu, a Canada Research Chair in Global Water Sustainability and Ecohydrology not affiliated with the study. “This would be especially relevant for some countries in the southern hemisphere where a major part of the domestic waste is not treated.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2023-03-01/phytoplankton-blooms-see-two-decade-surge-along-worlds-coastlines

New method simultaneously monitors clumps and the mixing intensity in a single step

Date:February 27, 2023

Source:Texas A&M University

From https://scitechdaily.com/stanford-researchers-develop-an-innovative-new-way-to-predict-beach-water-quality/

Raw water contains microscopic pathogens that are too small to remove during water and wastewater treatment easily. Chemicals are added to form large clumps called flocs, which are easily filtered out. Flocculation is the process used in water treatment to remove suspended particles from the water.

“Coagulant chemicals need to be added to purify drinking water and remove turbidity (cloudiness) and microbes that are too small to be visible to the naked eye,” said Dr. Kuang-An Chang, professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Texas A&M.

But it is crucial to properly mix the water and chemicals so the pathogens properly clump. If mixing is low, clumps won’t form. If mixing is too intense, clumps will form but quickly break apart.

The new method simultaneously monitors the size and shape of the clumps and the mixing intensity in a single step, in real time, allowing for more accurate measurements. The value of the research lies in the fact that mixing is one of the most energy-consuming processes during water and wastewater purification.

The results of this study were recently published in the journal ACS ES&T Engineering and featured on the cover of its February issue.

“We developed a brand-new technique to non-intrusively monitor the mixing so that we can precisely control it, quantify heterogeneities within the reactor and potentially optimize it to create flocs of desired characteristics while simultaneously minimizing energy consumption,” he said.

This first-of-its-kind technique can be used to improve flocculation, meaning successfully removing contaminants by growing large enough clumps while minimizing the energy used.

“All previous research did this in two steps,” Chang said. “In the old approach, first, artificial particles of known characteristics would be added to monitor mixing. Then, a second experiment would be done with ‘identical’ settings and the actual clumps would be monitored.

“We essentially halved the workload and improved precision because there are always statistical differences any time you do two experiments.”

This interdisciplinary project was a collaboration between Chang, who focuses on fluid dynamics, and Dr. Shankar Chellam, professor of civil and environmental engineering and A.P. and Florence Wiley Professor III, who focuses on water/wastewater treatment.

Three graduate students performed the experimental work and associated numerical analysis: Kaleisha Miller, Kyungho Kim and Wei-Liang Chuang, who is now an assistant professor at National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan.

FOR MORE INFROMATION: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/02/230227161344.htm

https://aosts.com/role-microbes-microorganisms-used-wastewater-sewage-treatment/

February 15, 2023

Source:Drexel University

“Forever chemicals” are everywhere — water, soil, crops, animals, the blood of 97% of Americans — researchers from Drexel University’s College of Engineering are trying to figure out how they got there. Their recent findings suggest that the microbes that help break down biodegradable materials and other waste are likely complicit in the release of the notorious per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) into the environment.

In a paper published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Environmental Science Processes & Impacts, the group showed how PFAS — chemicals that had been widely used in water, heat and stain-resistant products and have been linked to serious health problems — can leach out of fertilizer made from recycled waste with the help of microbial decomposition. The finding could help to explain how PFAS accumulates in the soil, crops and groundwater in farmland across the country.

“Because it is not currently possible to eliminate PFAS from the environment, it’s important to understand everything we can about how it is able to persist and accumulate so broadly in the natural world,” said co-author Asa Lewis, PhD, who led the research as a doctoral student at Drexel along with environmental engineers from Temple University. “Our work shows how microbial weathering fits into the PFAS dissemination pathway from biosolids.”

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, about half of all sewage waste in the U.S. — about 4.5 million metric tons — is treated and converted to a sludge, called biosolid waste. About half of that goes through further treatment to remove biological and chemical contaminants and is converted into a fertilizer product. For the last 50 years, this fertilizer has been used throughout the country on farmland, residential gardens and landscaping.

But research in the last year raised concerns about this widespread use when it revealed that PFAS can persist in biosolid fertilizer, despite the treatment process.

“We know that microbes exist in biosolid sludge even after the stabilization treatment process and given the role they play in the decomposition of organic compounds, such as fats, protein, and polysaccharide residuals in the biosolids, we wanted to examine how microbial weathering of these organic compounds can impact PFAS leaching potential from biosolids over time because it PFAS compounds are thought to stick to these compounds,” said Christopher Sales, PhD, an associate professor in the College of Engineering and a co-author of the study.

To do it, the team collected biosolid samples that had undergone one of three types of treatment — aerobic digestion, anaerobic digestion or composting — at wastewater recycling and reuse facilities. The content of each sample was tested to determine the initial level of organic matter, proteins and lipids and PFAS concentration in these different types of biosolids. These samples were then placed in an environmentally controlled chamber for three months to look for indicators of microbial activity, especially degradation of organics, lipids and proteins, and sought to see how this microbial activity affected how much PFAS would partition from the biosolids into water.

The researchers found that the samples with the highest level of microbial activity also demonstrated the highest level of PFAS partitioning — an indicator that this biosolid sludge would be more susceptible to PFAS leaching.

The results demonstrated this increase in PFAS partitioning over the three months, especially in the first 10 days of the experiment, is likely due to the microbes breaking down proteins and lipids in the biosolid, which allows the PFAS to spread, or partition, as water passes through.

“This work provides evidence that microbial weathering processes that lead to degradation of organic matter and biopolymers — as indicated by lipase activity, protease activity, and oxygen consumption rate, as well as changes in lipid, protein, and organic content — can impact PFAS partitioning and increase leaching potential in biosolids,” the authors wrote.

The team noted that the results likely implicate microbes in the process of PFAS leaching from biosolids after they are land-applied, but further research is needed to confirm how they are transported through the soils to surface waters, like rivers and lakes, groundwaters and how they bioaccumulate in crops and animals that might graze where biosolids are applied. In addition, the rate of biosolid weathering in nature might be much different than their lab study considering the role that rainfall, solar irradiation, and physical disturbances impact soil weathering would play outdoors.

The team contends that in order for agencies like the EPA to provide accurate guidance on PFAS risk and acceptable levels of contamination, understanding the path of “forever chemicals” is critical information.

“This research provides evidence that PFAS can leach from biosolids across different stabilization methods in wastewater treatment,” Lewis said. “And it provides more support that regulation or advanced treatment in wastewater treatment plants is needed to reduce impacts to the environment.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/02/230215100446.htm

Billions in clean energy incentives rely on raw materials from polluting corn and livestock.

By Keith Schneider
Circle of Blue

February 8, 2023

President Biden, U.S. environmental organizations, and climate activists were appropriately enthused last summer when Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act.

Embedded in the new statute are more than $140 billion in direct payments and tax incentives for renewable fuels and cleaner electrical generation to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade. The statute also includes $19.5 billion for the Department of Agriculture’s new “climate smart” crop production practices.

In the give and take of opinion about the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, the consensus is that the social benefits of curbing the Earth’s warming easily exceed the financial and social costs.

Yet viewed from the frontlines of a water quality emergency that has unfolded in the Heartland, the consensus dissolves in provisions that appear certain to increase the already immense tide of farm-related nutrient pollution draining from the land and contaminating surface and groundwater, especially in the grain, dairy, and meat-producing regions of the Great Lakes states and the Midwest Corn Belt.

Farming-related contaminants already pollute thousands of drinking water wells from Minnesota to Missouri, and virtually every mile of streams and rivers in Iowa is impaired with little regulation to rein in the pollutants. “It’s already a national emergency and a national scandal,” said Emma Schmit, a senior organizer in the Midwest for Food and Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group. “When we test our waterways, the main pollutants are E.coli and nitrates and phosphorus from agriculture. These are pathogens and contaminants that can cause serious issues for people. We’re about to give large corporate farms carte blanche to make it worse.”

How is it possible that legislation billed as an environmental protection statute ends up as a primary threat to clean water and communities? The answer is this: The law relies on raw materials from two of the most polluting industries in America – corn production, and industrialized livestock operations that fatten millions of beef cattle, cows, hogs, and chickens for consumer appetites.

Among the most costly provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act are practices that support three key agricultural efforts: The production of more ethanol from corn; the capture of carbon dioxide, especially from ethanol refineries; and moves to produce electricity and transportation fuel from methane by capturing emissions from manure digesters installed at massive livestock and poultry operations.

Large livestock operations, like this one in Arizona, are given broad discretion by states for managing and spreading a deluge of manure. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue

Center of Industrial Policy

In effect, those provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act put agriculture in a place it’s been slowly approaching for decades: at the very center of the nation’s industrial policy for developing energy for electrical generation and transportation.

The incentive for more corn production is particularly worrisome as farmers typically make heavy use of nitrogen fertilizers when growing corn, said Chris Jones, a research engineer and water quality specialist at the University of Iowa.

“Anytime we incentivize production of a nutrient hungry crop you’re going to get nutrient pollution,” Jones said. “Corn loses a lot of nutrients to the environment. We know that for a certainty. We’re incentivizing further production. We’re going to get more pollution. You don’t need to be a genius to know that.”

Corn is the most heavily fertilized row crop in America, accounting for 11 billion pounds of commercial nitrogen fertilizer applied to farmland annually, with 9 of the 11 billion pounds applied in the Midwest, according to the USDA. State and federal research shows that up to 70% of applied nitrogen is not taken up by the growing plant, and runs off the land and into streams, rivers, and groundwater.

Agricultural nutrient pollution is the primary reason that the Clean Water Act has not come close to meeting its “fishable and swimmable” goal for US surface waters.

Nitrogen and phosphorus drain from cropland and livestock operations into swollen ditches like this one in Michigan. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue

Making water pollution worse

The law’s support for the expansion of cattle, large dairies, hog, and poultry feeding operations is equally as problematic.

The country’s large livestock operations, also primarily centered in the Midwest, produce hundreds of billions of gallons of untreated liquid manure and tens of millions of tons of solid manure that are spread with scant oversight on farmland. Manure contains nitrogen, phosphorus, and dangerous pathogens that drain from the land and contaminate waters at the center of the country. 

In 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identified phosphorus and nitrogen discharges from U.S. farmland as “the single greatest challenge to our nation’s water quality.” Because of waivers written into the Clean Water Act, which last year marked its 50th anniversary, nutrient runoff from farms and smaller livestock operations are completely unregulated. Large livestock operators, meanwhile, are given broad discretion by states for managing and spreading manure. Congress required no additional safeguards for water in the Inflation Reduction Act. 

In other words, for millions of Americans in the Heartland already contending with dirty water, the new law will make the country’s most severe surface and groundwater pollution worse, according to water quality specialists. Probably a lot worse.

“It’s going to end up in the water,” Rebecca Ohrtman, a water quality specialist from Iowa, said of the contaminates from what are commonly called “confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).  Ohrtman spent much of her career as water protection coordinator with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. “I can’t believe they’re going to provide all this funding with no strings attached.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not respond to questions raised about the effects of the new statute on water pollution. Corn and livestock industry executives did not respond to interview requests. 

Harmful algal blooms on Lake Erie and so many of the nation’s other iconic waters are the result of toxic nutrients running off cropland from commercial fertilizer and manure. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue

Climate Smart Farm Provisions

In approving the Inflation Reduction Act, neither the Biden administration nor Congress wholly ignored the risk to water. The law enables the U.S.D.A. to fund its $19.5 billion climate smart program to “ improve soil carbon, reduce nitrogen losses, or reduce, capture, avoid, or sequester carbon dioxide, methane, or nitrous oxide emissions, associated with agricultural production.”

The statute also provides $18 billion for existing, decades old conservation programs. “The Inflation Reduction Act provides major incentives for a broad range of different practices and strategies for managing nutrients, guarding water quality, and keeping carbon in the soil,” Senator Debbie Stabenow, the Michigan Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said in an interview. “There are a lot of strategies that work but there are not enough farmers participating because there hasn’t been enough money to fund all the requests.”

Whether that is the case will be tested this year. The climate smart program includes the largest investment ever made by the federal government in environmentally-sensitive organic and sustainable farm practices. But that $300 million investment applies to just 19 projects in the Midwest, and a few thousand acres of the more than 100 million acres of cropland in the Corn Belt and Great Lakes States.

The bulk of the USDA “climate smart” and conservation programs support voluntary “best management practices” that include not plowing before planting, raising cover crops, and planting buffer strips to soak up excess nutrients. But best management practices, initially designed to control soil erosion, have displayed scant usefulness in reducing phosphorus in streams in the Great Lakes states.

These best management practices have never been especially popular with corn growers and livestock producers in the 9-state Corn Belt from the Dakotas to Missouri. Just 2.2 million of Iowa’s 30 million acres of farmland, for example, were planted in cover crops, according to the most recent analysis by the state Department of Agriculture. 

Of much greater importance to crop and livestock producers are tax incentives directed at renewable fuels and carbon sequestration. The Biden administration proposes to increase ethanol production from 15 billion gallons currently to 21 billion gallons this year, and 23 billion gallons by 2025. In addition, the administration just released a national energy strategy that calls for ethanol to be a primary feedstock for producing 35 billion gallons of “sustainable” fuel by mid-century for the world’s airlines.

Though the $1.01 per gallon tax credit is a win for corn and ethanol producers, the administration’s plan for ethanol is a big problem for water. Basic arithmetic explains why. With contemporary crop yields it requires 360 million bushels of corn to produce 1 billion gallons of ethanol. Those bushels are raised on roughly 2 million acres.

Corn farmers generally apply 140 to 160 pounds of commercial nitrogen fertilizer per acre to corn for ethanol, or roughly 300 million pounds of nutrients per billion gallons of ethanol. Corn farmers already apply more than 4 billion pounds of nitrogen fertilizer to produce the current national supply of ethanol. 

Five billion more gallons of ethanol equates to applying 1.5 billion more pounds of fertilizer to 10 million more acres of cropland in corn-growing states. And more than half will drain and leach from the land into the water. 

Another feature of the Inflation Reduction Act is a flurry of tax incentives to generate renewable energy from biodigesters. Essentially they are big tanks, like those seen at gasoline tank farms, that with the help of bacteria and heat convert organic wastes to methane. 

TO READ THE ARTICLE IN ITS ENTIRETY: https://www.circleofblue.org/2023/world/new-u-s-climate-law-will-make-water-contamination-worse/