Emma Dumain and Bev Banks, E&E News reporters

The South Carolina congressional delegation first learned about the Marine Corps’ interest in relocating the Parris Island boot camp from a military-focused publication, with officials citing the need for more space to comply with a federal mandate to integrate women into training facilities.

But a senior House Democrat on the Armed Services Committee is also setting his sights on the military installation for another reason: its vulnerability to climate change.

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, told E&E News this week the Marine Corps would have his support in relocating the base because Parris Island’s long-term survival is not guaranteed in the face of extreme weather events and rising sea levels.

“The South Carolina delegation doesn’t want to move [it], and I’m saying, ‘Well, you don’t want to move it, but I’m telling you, hurricanes are going to,'” said Garamendi.

“The Marine Corps knows a Category 3 hurricane will destroy the base. And I’m going, ‘Well, then, we better plan on moving, because it isn’t going to get better, it’s only going to get worse. The seas are going to get higher and higher.'”

Parris Island sits in South Carolina’s 1st District, which includes Charleston and is largely coastal.

The area by and large has become prone to intense flooding and rising sea levels during increasingly severe storms and hurricanes. According to some estimates, at this rate, Parris Island could be underwater nearly 30% of the year by 2050.

It’s not clear whether Garamendi was given specific information about whether climate change was a factor in the decision to explore the closure of Parris Island.

The congressman’s office later clarified he had not spoken directly to Marine Corps commandants about Parris Island since Military.com reported last week that the Pentagon was considering moving the South Carolina base, along with the recruit training depot in San Diego, to meet new requirements for gender integration at boot camps.

A Marine Corps spokesman did not comment when asked whether climate change was a consideration, instead providing a statement pointing to the provision on gender-integrated training in the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act as a reason for the move.

“Due to a variety of limitations, neither Marine Corps Recruit Depots Parris Island nor San Diego are currently able to optimally train recruits in an integrated environment,” the statement said. “At this time, any remarks on courses of action are premature as we are simply exploring all options.”

Garamendi this week also emphasized that conversations about relocation were in the very stages and that no decisions had been made, though last year’s NDAA specifically gave the Marine Corps five years to integrate female recruits into the installations at Parris Island — and eight years in San Diego, specifically.

Yet Garamendi, who has made military preparedness for the effects of climate change a priority in his first term as Readiness Subcommittee chairman, is taking an aggressive posture that could set the tone as conversations continue — specifically, that South Carolina lawmakers who have vowed to fight the Parris Island base relocation will not have Garamendi’s support if the plan moves forward.

“No one wants to lose a base,” Garamendi said. “It will either be a planned event or an unplanned event, one way or another, so let’s do it wisely.”

Extreme ‘weather’

Garamendi’s comments came as the military under President Trump has struggled to articulate its plans to boost environmental resilience efforts against the backdrop of an administration reluctant to acknowledge the reality of climate change and the science behind it.

Though the military has acknowledged the threat to its installations, some officials refer to those impacts as extreme “weather” (E&E Daily, Jan. 17).

Earlier this year, Maureen Sullivan, deputy assistant secretary of defense for environment, told E&E News the Department of Defense was using 2050 and 2085 scenarios to assess climate risks for military installations (Climatewire, Jan. 10).

“We have a lot of [older] buildings, and we’re not replacing them,” she said.

The department instead issued guidance for installations to consider climate vulnerabilities into their long-term master plans rather than taking decisive action.

Congress has taken some steps to force the military to make plans now to confront the environmental challenges ahead.

The House’s version of the fiscal 2021 NDAA included multiple provisions related to climate resiliency and military bases, many secured by Garamendi (E&E Daily, June 23).

Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues to be forced to implement resilience strategies to fortify bases prone to, or directly affected by, climate impacts.

Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida incurred over $4 billion in damages after Hurricane Michael hit the base two years ago (Climatewire, Nov. 5, 2019).

A year later, Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska experienced major damage from flooding that would cost nearly $5 billion, according to the Air Force.

‘We must prepare’

In 2019, DOD released a congressionally mandated report that identified military installations at risk of climate impacts such as flooding, wildfires and drought.

Parris Island — an iconic, historic fixture of the Marine Corps and an economic driver for South Carolina’s 1st District — was not on that list.

But in 2018, Gen. Glenn Walters, then the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps who is now president of the Citadel in Charleston, told the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness that he had had “two briefs in the last eight months on one of our most critical vulnerabilities: that is Parris Island, South Carolina.

“I’ve come to the conclusion in my own mind that it’s not today — we don’t have to build a sea wall today — but we have to consider one, and we’re monitoring it every day,” he added.

In 2016, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report that included Parris Island as one of 18 military installations especially vulnerable to rising sea levels.

“The US Armed Forces depend on safe and functional bases to protect the national security of our country,” the report’s introduction reads. “We must prepare for the growing exposure of our military bases to sea level rise.”

Fight to keep Parris

Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.), a former ocean engineer whose district includes Parris Island and who has made environmental advocacy a hallmark of his first term in office, is aware of the military base’s vulnerability.

“We know that Parris Island and nearly every other military installation in the Lowcountry, including Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, Joint Base Charleston, and Coast Guard Sector Charleston, face long-term threats from sea level rise and recurrent flooding,” Cunningham said in a statement to E&E News.

“That’s why it is so important we take important, practical steps now to ensure its climate resiliency, protecting both our national security and an indispensable part of our local economy.”

He continued, “We can and should work with the Department of Defense to ensure these installations and the surrounding communities are prepared to face these threats.

“I’m proud to have passed amendments into the NDAA that direct DoD to develop installation plans that assess current climate vulnerabilities and plan for mitigating those risks, and work with local governments to identify and secure the public roads that hamper military readiness due to flooding and sea-level rise.”

But Cunningham is adamant the reality of climate change should not necessitate the closure of the Parris Island base and has pledged to fight any plans to go through with that action, alongside the state’s Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott.

The anxiety over a possible relocation made it into the first debate earlier this week in the 1st District between Cunningham and his opponent, Republican state Rep. Nancy Mace (E&E Daily, Sept. 29).

Cunningham there, too, acknowledged that “Parris Island is … being threatened by climate change” and cited the need for “major infrastructure investments” to meet the challenge — investments he would continue to fight to secure on Capitol Hill.

Garamendi said he would have given Cunningham some advice for a different sort of answer.

“If I were Joe Cunningham, if that question comes up, flip it around: Military readiness requires recruiting people, 365 days of the year, and if you have a recruit depot that may not be able to function because of a hurricane, we need to plan,” he said. “And I’m all for readiness.”

Published in conjunction with E&E News

Starting this fall, the Department of Defense will test every military firefighter’s blood for a class of chemicals tied to health problems. But the testing leaves out veterans, and the results may be of little use for individuals.

One of those veterans, former military firefighter Dan Casson, was surprised to be diagnosed with multiple kinds of cancer six years ago.

There was malignant melanoma and basal cell cancer on his face. He almost lost his ear. And a prostate cancer diagnosis came around the same time.

His doctors at first blamed too much sun exposure for the skin cancer, but Casson disagrees. “I was never a sun worshipper,” he said. Instead, he blames chemicals he was exposed to on the job.

Firefighters for decades put out flames using aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, which contains per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. PFAS have been tied to health problems including cancer.

Legislation passed last year mandates that military firefighters receive blood tests for PFAS beginning this fall, but retired firefighters and dependents aren’t included. Meanwhile, there’s no standard for how much PFAS in the blood is too much.

Casson, of New Port Richey, Fla., enlisted in the Air Force Reserve in 1975. While training as a firefighter at Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois for eight weeks in the ’70s, he put out fires using AFFF.

Casson, now 70, said he is “100%” convinced that PFAS in the foam led to his illnesses since he has no family history of these cancers and was “drenched” in AFFF while at Chanute.

He has never been tested to determine how much PFAS is in his blood.

The fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act mandates that the military stop using the foam by October 2024 (Greenwire, April 3). It also requires DOD to test military firefighters’ blood starting Oct. 1.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) proposed adding a provision to the fiscal 2021 NDAA that would extend blood tests to former service members like Casson and their families, but the provision didn’t make it out of committee.

A Shaheen spokesperson said the senator will look for other avenues to advance legislation, including conference negotiations for the fiscal 2021 NDAA.

The House passed a provision in its version of the fiscal 2021 legislation to guarantee service members won’t pay for a PFAS blood test.

Such testing would be a step toward finding out how pervasive the chemicals are in service members’ blood overall, but legislation so far has not set standards for what PFAS levels should be.

Kevin Ferrara, a retired military firefighter, recently had a PFAS blood test that found the chemicals were not detectable.

As an Air Force firefighter, Ferrara, 48, of Woolrich, Pa., frequently used AFFF and said he was frustrated when his results could not clearly determine how much PFAS was in his blood.

“We really need to establish a standard level, because right now come October, those active duty military and DOD civilian firefighters, they’re going to get their blood drawn but then nobody really knows what to do after that,” Ferrara said.

Congress and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should establish a range for PFAS levels in blood, Ferrara added, because without a standard for testing, there’s no way for firefighters to know their level of exposure.

Ferrara also trained at Chanute Air Force Base, which is now an EPA Superfund site.

He became an activist for firefighters after learning about the health hazards associated with AFFF in 2015, and now he’s worried that provisions intended to protect them are not sufficient.

“I’ve discussed this with several firefighters and even members of Congress, is that, are we sort of putting the cart before the horse?” Ferrara said.

In his opinion, Congress and the CDC are “wasting their time” with these tests if there’s no established standard for PFAS in blood.

Government response

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) has proposed extending the PFAS blood tests to former service members and families. Francis Chung/E&E News

Shaheen’s office said the blood tests will give a fuller picture of the extent of firefighters’ PFAS exposure, which could also be useful for the broader population as officials study the chemicals’ health implications. The senator has also pushed to keep service members and veterans updated on potential treatment options if they were exposed.

In addition, Shaheen introduced legislation earlier this summer, the “PFAS Exposure Assessment and Documentation Act,” that would evaluate service members for PFAS exposure and provide blood testing if it’s deemed necessary (E&E Daily, June 10).

The Department of Defense is scheduled to meet the Oct. 1 deadline to begin the blood tests, Pentagon spokesperson Chuck Prichard said in an email.

The tests are provided for each firefighter during an annual medical exam. DOD will cover the costs for the tests, which Prichard said will reach about $4 million in fiscal 2021.

As for DOD’s standard for blood tests, he quoted the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s clinical guidance on PFAS, which states that “there are no health-based screening levels for specific PFAS” and “interpretation of measured PFAS concentrations in individuals is limited in its use.”

Veterans do have options for testing as well, even though it’s not mandated by law. A Department of Veterans Affairs spokesperson said in an email that all VA facilities conduct PFAS blood tests at a physician’s request, “based upon the patient’s clinical need.”

Dr. Michael Icardi, national director of pathology and laboratory medicine services for the VA, added that PFAS blood test results “cannot be linked to current or future health conditions or guide medical treatment decisions.”

Additionally, he said most people in the United States have measurable amounts of PFAS in their blood, but “normal ranges have not been established.”

‘Mission mentality’

Dan Casson served two years in the Air Force and spent 12 years in Army National Guard and Army Reserve. Now 70, he’s been diagnosed with multiple forms of cancer. Dan Casson

For nearly 20 years, Mark Grimm, 50, was a firefighter in the West Virginia Air National Guard. He retired in 2014.

In 2005, Grimm was diagnosed with kidney cancer, six months after his father, a civilian firefighter, discovered he had cancer.

“It was just out of the blue, because I had no previous medical issues,” Grimm said.

During his military career, Grimm said, he was never offered a PFAS blood test.

Grimm said the hazards linked to firefighting foam were “never really addressed” when he was a firefighter, but he would serve again even if he had known about them. “Without a doubt,” he said.

Casson, after his own diagnosis in 2014, spent six years pleading his case to the VA for disability compensation related to AFFF exposure, he said.

He said he received 100% settlement back pay and full disability payments each month.

Casson said firefighters dealing with cancer can’t give up.

“You have to approach this with a mission mentality, and it’s a life-or-death mission,” he said. “So get into the firefighting mode.”

Published in conjunction with E&E News

Reports of bugs nicknamed “murder hornets” in the United States generated a lot of buzz as well as new legislation this week — and climate change could make the problem worse.

Vespa mandarinia is the scientific name for the Asian giant hornet, which measures up to 2 inches long and delivers a powerful sting.

These hornets can decapitate honeybees and seize their hive in a couple of hours, and they’ve even killed humans on rare occasions, earning them their “murder” moniker.

Washington state officials confirmed two Asian giant hornet specimens locally last year. While the number of hornets throughout the country is unknown, climate change could provide the hornet a more suitable habitat in the United States.

“This hornet can exist in temperate regions anyway, simply broadening its range,” said James Carpenter, a curator of wasps at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. “It would be allowed by a warming climate to do that.”

House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) introduced legislation today to fund Asian giant hornet eradication efforts.

The “Murder Hornet Eradication Act” would require the Interior secretary to oversee grant programs providing financial aid to communities trying to get rid of the hornet or restore bee populations.

The legislation would provide $4 million each fiscal year from 2021 through 2025.

“This bill is about getting a head start on an obvious problem before it’s too late, which is the approach we need to be taking rather than relying on denial and anti-scientific magical thinking,” Grijalva said in a statement.

‘Nerve-wracking’ for beekeepers

Previous research has found that honeybees — a main target of the hornets — are threatened by climate change as environmental stress decreases their ability to ward off infection and forage for food.

And the Asian giant hornet can more easily adjust to a changing climate than honeybees because it makes its nest underground, limiting the hornets’ exposure to extreme temperature changes.

“They essentially make their own climate in their nest,” said David Ragsdale, the chief scientific officer and associate director of AgriLife Research at Texas A&M University.

The hornets’ ability to survive in a range of temperatures makes it difficult to predict “exactly where it will be at home,” he added.

Some U.S. beekeepers are worried about how to protect their hives if the Asian giant hornet spreads across the country.

Joshua Kieliszewski and his wife, Jodie, began beekeeping about 12 years ago in Michigan. They run a small business called Bee Lovely Botanicals LLC, which sells soap, lip balm, hand cream and other honey-infused products.

The Kieliszewskis usually have 40 hives with up to 100,000 bees per hive during peak times in the summer.

“It is nerve-wracking when this is our livelihood and this is, you know, honestly, our passion,” Joshua Kieliszewski said.

Honeybees are essential to maintaining the U.S. food supply since they pollinate over 130 fruits and vegetables, according to the Department of Agriculture.

In recent years, honeybee populations have declined with the invasion of parasitic varroa mites and colony collapse disorder. Now the Asian giant hornet presents another threat.

“We love bees, and we love beekeeping, and to see one more thing come and plague them is kind of heartbreaking for us, and we’re hoping that it goes away,” Kieliszewski said.

Chris Looney, an entomologist at the Washington State Department of Agriculture, said the hornets aren’t going to “exterminate all honeybees,” but he is worried about beekeepers’ livelihoods.

“We don’t know what the effects will be, but we also just don’t want to find out,” Looney said.

Climate change may be expanding the habitat for the Asian giant hornet within certain regions rather than worldwide, Looney said.

He used the example of the yellow-legged hornet, which was introduced to France from Asia in the early 2000s and spread quickly across Western Europe. Some climate models in Europe show suitable habitat will expand there for the yellow-legged hornet, he said.

“There’s every reason to believe that that wasp will ultimately have or that hornet will ultimately have a wider habitat range than it will under current conditions,” Looney said.

‘Low risk’ to people

Humans should be less alarmed than honeybees about the Asian giant hornet.

Despite its nickname, Carpenter said, the hornet is “not that dangerous” to people.

“Don’t mess with the nest, but individuals flying out on their own, they aren’t going to bother you,” Carpenter said. “So don’t panic.”

While Washington state officials are acting quickly to eradicate the hornets, Looney said people “shouldn’t be afraid of them.”

“It’s pretty low risk to most people, most of the time, so that’s why the phrase ‘murder hornets’ is really unhelpful,” Looney said.

Published in conjunction with E&E News

Manuel Quiñones, Bev Banks and George Cahlink, E&E News reporters

The Senate is back on Capitol Hill today and the House may return next week, but leaders are still figuring out the logistics of working during the pandemic.

Senators have already scheduled a series of in-person hearings, taking advantage of larger meeting rooms to secure social distancing.

“If it’s essential for doctors, nurses, health care workers, truck drivers and grocery store workers and many other brave Americans to keep carefully manning their own duty stations during the pandemic, then it is essential for senators to carefully man ours and support them,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Fox News.

The Democratic leadership has been hesitant to criticize McConnell for calling lawmakers back to Capitol Hill. Still, there is grumbling, especially considering that Washington remains under a stay-at-home order.

“I think it’s unfortunate that Sen. McConnell is making the Capitol police and groundskeepers and people who work in the food service come back in violation of that local order,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told MSNBC last week. “It’s endangering the health of many, many people.”

The Office of Attending Physician for the Capitol put out a multipage memo to address safety concerns for lawmakers and their aides. Recommendations include minimizing the number of staff, not crowding workspaces, screening visitors and wearing face coverings.

McConnell is confident the Senate can conduct business in a safe manner.

“We can modify our routines in ways that are smart and safe, but we can honor our constitutional duty to the American people and conduct our business in person,” he said.

Democratic Sens. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Cory Booker of New Jersey said on a call with reporters last week they plan to keep their staff at home and their offices formally closed.

“I will be coming in and asking my staff to abide by the dictates of Washington, D.C.’s mayor and the governors of Virginia and Maryland, and so most of my staff — pretty much all of my staff — will be remaining working remotely,” Booker said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he’s leaving it to individual senators in his caucus to decide whether or not to come back to town.

“We Democrats are going to practice good social distancing and handle the situation the best we can,” Schumer told reporters last week. “We will continue to have our weekly calls by phone.”

One area Democrats have questioned McConnell on, however, is his plan to conduct business not related to the novel coronavirus pandemic, including judicial nominations (Greenwire, April 29).

“Having hearings on a judge who is unqualified, or hearings on candidates unrelated to COVID makes no sense at all,” Schumer said. “We need these oversight hearings.”

McConnell defended the move, however.

“We have many confirmations, for example,” he said. “The Senate is a personnel business, the House is not — that have been bottled up by the Democrats even before the pandemic, so we have much work to do with the American people, and we think we can do it safely.”

Remote voting

The House may change its rules as soon as next week to allow remote voting and committee work — something McConnell has declined to endorse.

Members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations met via videoconference Thursday to discuss proposals.

Subcommittee Chairman Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said remote voting should “never be the norm” but should be in place for times when senators cannot safely “be in the same place.”

“This is something that I think should be not looked at strictly in terms of the pandemic but the general concern that there are times when Congress either cannot physically or should not be gathering,” Portman said.

Portman and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced a resolution in March to allow for temporary remote voting within the Senate rules.

Martin Gold, a partner at Capitol Counsel and a former Senate Rules Committee staffer, told the panel that Congress needs to establish “guardrails” to determine when remote voting is utilized.

“I don’t think there is anybody who really thinks that remote participation is a substitute for the actual Senate,” Gold said.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) voiced support for remote voting during the hearing but raised concerns about the technology “becoming a political tool” during an emergency.

“I think being able to define what is a true emergency and what would require remote voting would be something that we need to pay attention to,” Romney said.

Portman noted the video conference was the “first time we’ve been able to do this in the U.S. Congress, certainly in the Senate.”

The full committee has scheduled a video conference hearing for Wednesday on new COVID-19 information driving policy.

In the House

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) sent a letter to the attending physician Friday asking for advice on how the chamber could return.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last week declined to weigh in on the Senate’s decision to come back but noted the House has more than four times as many members.

“It’s better to wait,” said Pelosi.

Still, there is some committee work happening. The House Appropriations Committee is meeting to discuss pandemic issues, for example.

House Democrats and Republicans have pledged to work together on remote work procedures, but it doesn’t seem as if all GOP members are on board.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) echoed other Republicans who said the House should view its work as “essential” and reconvene sooner rather than later.

“I think the American public would like to see us do our job,” McCarthy told reporters last week.

The House GOP leader said he has not been pushing to bring everyone back all at once but prefers committees return first for key markups.

McCarthy suggested committees could vote on legislation during the beginning of the week and then the entire House could return a few days later to vote on it.

“As these bills get done, you can pinpoint when they need to be voted on, and you can bring members back. So maybe all members are not back there for an entire week. They’re there for a few days to vote,” he said.

He also voiced concerns about one member being able to cast votes for large groups of lawmakers.

McCarthy this morning published his ideas for reopening Congress in a post on the platform Medium.

Pelosi did not detail the remote work plans, but the Democratic majority appears poised to move forward on its own if necessary.

“Everybody wants to open up the Congress, but we want to do it in a way that if people have to stay home, because of this [pandemic], whether it’s about themselves, a family member or the transportation, which is more difficult now, that remote voting will enable them to do that,” Pelosi said. “We just have to get enough people here to do the remote voting.”

Reporter Nick Sobczyk contributed.

Published in conjunction with E&E News

Dozens of towns and cities across the country have suspended parts of their recycling programs in response to the pandemic.

Curbside pickup and electronics recycling have halted in several municipalities as the novel coronavirus has made working conditions less safe and companies have prioritized regular trash pickup.

Centre County, Pa., temporarily stopped curbside recycling services March 30 for about 28,000 households to limit the spread of the virus, said Joanne Shafer, deputy director of the county’s Recycling & Refuse Authority.

Normally, residents place their recyclables into a bin and crews hand-sort the items at the curb, but that could heighten the risk of viral transmission.

Potentially, a worker could “sort recycling at a house, get back into the truck and then touch their face,” Shafer said.

Officials in Fayetteville, Ark., suspended curbside recycling out of similar worry for employees.

“We had real concerns of whether we were going to be exposing our workers to materials that, you know, that people in the community had contaminated through sneezing or coughing or handling,” said Brian Pugh, Fayetteville’s waste reduction coordinator.

Pugh said the city was alarmed by a March study in The New England Journal of Medicine that found the coronavirus survives on plastic for up to 72 hours and on cardboard for up to 24 hours.

Both Centre County and Fayetteville have added more recycling drop-off locations to make up for the loss of curbside service.

Centre County’s Shafer predicts only a slight decrease in recycling, but Pugh said Fayetteville has seen a big drop in collections.

“We’re losing about 45 tons a week of recyclables right now, and that’s another reason we’re anxious to get back to the program and get it going again,” Pugh said.

From recycling bin to landfill

For municipalities that contract out their recycling pickup and processing services, some choices are out of their hands during the pandemic.

In Jefferson City, Mo., waste collection company Republic Services announced the suspension of curbside recycling on March 23.

Republic Services “decided it was best to just make sure that we can service the trash, and if the recycling has to go into the landfill temporarily, it will,” said Sonny Sanders, Jefferson City’s director of planning and protective services.

With the exception of glass, there are no city-affiliated or Republic Services drop-off locations in Jefferson City. Sanders worried that residents might get used to not doing things like “rinsing out your milk jug and putting it into the recycling.”

“That’s a hard habit to break,” Sanders said. “So now we’re encouraging people to break that habit, so, you know, it’s almost like we’re taking two steps back.”

Mount Pleasant, Mich., had to halt its curbside collection because the materials recovery facility that sorts its recycling shut down due to social distancing concerns, said Jason Moore, interim director of public works.

The electronics recycling program in Chatham County, N.C., ceased when a local vocational program stopped processing recyclables, since it was not deemed an essential service.

“Our recycling company, Synergy, they’re still open and operating,” said Shannon Culpepper, the county’s recycling and education specialist. “We just don’t have a way to get the materials to them because we use this middleman.”

Market for plastic

Recycling programs were already struggling after China — where the United States was accustomed to sending its contaminated recyclables — banned most solid waste imports in 2018.

So the virus that causes COVID-19, Sanders said, was “the straw that sort of broke the camel’s back.”

When China stopped accepting scrap materials like plastic and paper from U.S. companies, recyclables piled up at waste facilities. Sanders explained that China’s increased production of recycled materials has decreased the need for imported items from the United States.

“The market has just kind of gone down on the monetary value of a lot of those goods,” Sanders said.

Published in conjunction with E&E News

Videos showing floods of milk rushing down the drain circulated on social media this month, vividly illustrating the agriculture industry’s losses during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

After businesses and schools closed in response to social distancing measures, large-scale farms lost their normal customers and many had to throw out food. The breakdown of those dumped crops can create emissions that heat up the climate.

When food like a tomato is dumped into a landfill or piled up as waste, anaerobic processes break down the crop and release methane.

“That’s the kind of food waste I think that is most alarming to people — is just seeing it dumped, and it, you know, just putrefying and then releasing more methane,” said Sean Pessarra, a 32-year-old farmer and horticulturist in Perryville, Ark.

Growing those crops in the first place generated its own emissions, so adding further emissions from waste is like “burning the candle on both ends,” said Pessarra, who works with Heifer USA, a nonprofit focused on teaching farmers how to make a living wage through sustainable agriculture.

Pessarra’s small-scale vegetable farm composts food that isn’t sold, which limits waste compared with a large conventional farm. But it has still sustained economic losses, including $4,000 worth of spinach and lettuce he expected to sell.

EPA estimates that the U.S. agriculture industry as a whole contributed 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions in 2018, including nitrous oxide, methane and carbon dioxide.

A Natural Resources Defense Council report in 2017 found that food waste accounts for at least 2.6% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, equal to the emissions from more than 37 million cars.

No one knows the exact impact of the recent dumping. EPA has said in the past that organic material discharged from dairy farms can break down into microorganisms that deplete oxygen in the water. That can harm marine life and, if it consumes all the oxygen, cause decay that releases its own methane.

Elizabeth Balkan, director of NRDC’s food waste, food and agriculture program, said the major climate impacts from food waste happen before that food is actually thrown out: “From the energy, the water and the resources that are used in the growing and manufacturing, distribution, storage and transportation of foods.”

Balkan used waste at a dairy farm as an example.

As milk is poured down a drain because it “couldn’t get to the consumer in time,” the wasted energy used during pasteurization and bottling leaves an “enormous greenhouse gas emissions footprint,” Balkan said.

One of the videos highlighted on social media came from Nikki Boxler of Boxler Dairy Farm in western New York.

“This week we got the call to start dumping milk because processing plants are full & there is no place for it to go due to the closure of restaurants, schools, and food services,” Boxler wrote in a tweet April 5.

‘Waste at a massive scale’

Many large-scale farms couldn’t adapt to the supply chain disruption in time to avoid tossing out their products.

“They can’t really retool quickly to turn those onions into 10-pound bags to send to a grocery store,” said Jennifer Kaplan, a food systems instructor at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena, Calif.

Large farms’ inability to get their products to consumers could lead to unprecedented waste, she said.

“There’s going to be a kind of food waste at a massive scale that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before, to be honest,” Kaplan said.

Although it would seem to be an obvious solution to send those crops somewhere like a food bank, that’s difficult, too, in the long term when there’s limited refrigeration capacity and labor shortages.

Pessarra said sustainable farming practices such as composting could help farms reduce both food waste and their climate impact, but that may take a long time.

“To set up that system this quickly … it would just take too long,” Pessarra said.

Published in conjunction with E&E News and Scientific American

Social distancing during the novel coronavirus pandemic has transformed how congressional lawmakers connect with constituencies.

Senate and House offices are discovering different ways to stay in touch with community leaders and other voters.

House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) is hosting conference calls with different constituencies and changing how his office addresses casework.

“Obviously moving our offices to full telework complicates things from a casework standpoint,” said Geoffrey Nolan, the lawmaker’s communications director, “but we have actually switched all of our casework operations online.”

Constituents can download assistance forms on Grijalva’s website, and then a caseworker will give them a call.

Nolan said one of the biggest challenges is meeting the needs of older constituents who may not have an intimate knowledge of the internet. Still, people can submit forms via fax or U.S. mail.

Grijalva’s personal office is also exploring more opportunities for video outreach on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, said Nolan.

Dingell’s blog

Michigan Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell has also used social media to her advantage during the pandemic.

The congresswoman’s Twitter account sends out updates on telephone town halls and links to a webpage called Debbie’s Blog.

“It’s hard for me too, I love being out and talking to people,” Dingell wrote in a blog post this week. “We have a personal responsibility to protect others more vulnerable in our community.”

Dingell — a member of the Energy & Commerce and Natural Resources committees — has written a blog post about the pandemic almost every day since March 12.

Other lawmakers, like Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), have also created a page on their website for information solely related to the coronavirus.

Town halls

Lobbyists and advocacy groups have turned to technology to reach out to lawmakers and aides amid social distancing (E&E Daily, March 20).

House members and senators have similarly turned to telephone and video town halls to speak with constituents about the pandemic.

Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah) tweeted a video of himself in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington yesterday informing the public about his upcoming event.

“If you want to see details throughout the day, please check my website curtis.house.gov,” Curtis said. “We’re going to have a tele-town hall meeting tonight, and the details are on the website.”

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) made the audio from his past three telephone town halls available on his website.

“On the [personal protective equipment], we do have additional masks coming online from private industry,” Gardner said in response to a caller during his March 21 session.

Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) hosted telephone town halls in the past week and a half.

New Hampshire Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan hosted a joint conference call last night.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is directing all COVID-19 inquiries to the phone number 304-342-5855 and email address common_sense@manchin.senate.gov.

Rep. Donald McEachin (D-Va.) invited his constituents to a virtual fireside chat on Zoom yesterday afternoon.

The video call featured a discussion on economic disruptions to small businesses and restaurants from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Published in conjunction with E&E News