Fueled by Climate Change, Wildfires Threaten Toxic Superfund Sites
Blazes at the imperiled hazardous waste sites could release toxins ranging from acid mine drainage to radioactive smoke.
December 23, 2020
Firefighters use a back burn to try and control the Carr fire as it spreads towards the towns of Douglas City and Lewiston near Redding, California on July 31, 2018. The fire swept over the Iron Mountain Mine Superfund site, threatening to release corrosive chemicals into the watershed and contaminate Redding s water supply. Two firefighters were killed fighting the blaze and a 70 year old woman and her two great-grandchildren perished when their Redding home was swallowed by the flames. Credit: Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images
Circling Eloh: A Meditation
First the war, thousands of miles to the east. No. First other, older wars with forgotten names, unhousing and unhoming the Apache Nation. The Arapaho Nation. The Cheyenne Nation. The Pueblo. The Shoshone. The Comanche. The Kiowa. The Navajo. There is a river run red, there is a lake, there is a world on fire who can never be regained. How can we reclaim when name and place are lost? When even ponderosa and lodgepole are uprooted for maple and elm?
There is water. There are a hundred years. There is not enough water. There are fifty years. There is the town of Stout, and then there is not. First the young couples leave for Fort Collins, over the hill, or for Wyoming, forty miles north. Then the families. Then the Bureau of Reclamation comes with letters and phone calls and men in uniforms and there is no choice left but to move. Some bring their homes, some fall into sheds provided five miles to the south.
Can California’s cap and trade address environmental justice? Julia Rosen Wed, 12/16/2020 – 01:30 Growing up in North Richmond, California, Denny Khamphanthong didn’t think much of the siren that wailed once a month at 11 a.m. every first Wednesday. The alarm is a test of the community’s emergency warning system, which has alerted residents to numerous incidents over the years at the nearby Chevron oil refinery. One accident there a 2012 fire sent a cloud of black smoke billowing over San Francisco Bay and left thousands of local residents struggling to breathe. Now, when Khamphanthong explains the sound to his young nieces, he sees the fear in their eyes. “I forget that this isn’t normal,” he says. Nor is the fact that Khamphanthong and most of his childhood friends carried inhalers. Richmond, a diverse, industrial city where housing prices and incomes have lagged behind its Bay Area neighbors, has poor air quality and some of the highest rates of respiratory