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Ask people across Canada about this summer’s wildfire season and they will tell you how the resulting smoke affected their daily lives. This underscores the urgency of getting our country on a credible path to net-zero by 2050. I’d like to think this...

• Some House Republicans are pushing to suspend the federal gas tax in hopes of improving their re-election chances, even though it would only save drivers a few pennies per gallon, but so far Speaker Mike Johnson has refused (Politico).
• GOP governors are divided on the issue, too. Gov. Mike Braun suspended Indiana’s gas tax, but has had to pay out $139 million to local communities to make up for the lost revenue (WISH). South Carolina’s Henry McMaster remains opposed (Go Upstate).
• Amtrak has settled a longstanding dispute over crossings with freight company Canadian National. (Trains)
• The new CEO of the Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority joined other municipal transit officials in asking Washington for more funding for security and to prevent fare-jumping. (AJC)
• Atlanta’s Downtown Connector is the busiest freeway in the U.S., carrying an average of 405,000 cars a day. (World Atlas)
• Facing drastic budget cuts, the Milwaukee County Transit System is choosing between bus route maps that preserve coverage or preserve service on the most-used routes. (Urban Milwaukee)
• Divvy bikeshare in Chicago had a record 3.5 million users this summer. (Block Club)
• The 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City could provide the impetus to bring Amtrak service back to Boise. (Idaho Statesman)
• Lexington is about to start fining drivers $50 for blocking bike lanes. (Herald-Leader)
• The Mobile city council approved an application for a $1 million federal grant to purchase five trolley-style buses. (Fox 10)
• Ontario is proceeding to tear up 12 miles of Toronto bike lanes. (The Cool Down)
• European bikeshare nextbike saw a 9 percent increase in users last year. (Smart Cities World)

Ask a street safety advocate why we should slow cars down, and you will get a solid answer about reducing crashes. Ask why we should cut traffic volumes on a residential street, and you will get another one about congestion. 

Both answers are right — but both leave out a health effect that has been rampant on those same streets the entire time, and that no federal agency in this country has measured since 1982.

I spent the past year putting a number on it, and the study came out in June. 

Why traffic noise kills — and how big the death toll is 

Road, rail and aircraft noise is linked to about 6,330 premature cardiovascular deaths across the contiguous United States every year. That’s because around 94.5 million Americans, or close to one in three, live in places where transportation noise runs at or above 45 decibels. 

Those deaths tend to come from the louder end of that range — above roughly 50 decibels. But the impact is still staggering. On average, a person who dies of a cardiovascular disease linked to transportation noise will lose 14.5 years from their projected lifespan. Another 13,600 cases of type 2 diabetes a year are attributable to the sounds of cars, trains, and planes, along with 3.3 million people whose sleep is regularly broken.

Recommended THUNDER ROAD: Car Noise Stokes Heart Attacks, Study Finds Eve Kessler May 4, 2022

To understand why these numbers are so high, it’s important to understand that transportation noise does not have to wake you to hurt you. It sets off a stress response, and over years, that shows up as vascular inflammation and cardiac events. Your sleep fragments whether or not you remember it in the morning. 

The World Health Organization built guidelines on noise in 2018, and the method I used to estimate the impact of noise exposure on deaths and disease is the same one WHO already uses for air pollution in more than a hundred countries. Moreover, the studies underlying that methodology adjusted for air pollution, and the noise effect remained.

Put another way: the danger of noise pollution is not just the danger of traffic exhaust wearing a different label. Transportation noise is harmful all on its own. 

Quieter save lives

Here’s the good news: we already know how to reduce traffic noise, and doing it would save siginficant lives.  

If we made every neighborhood in the country five decibels quieter, that one change would spare Americans about 106,500 years of healthy life every year, using a measure researchers call “disability-adjusted life years.” Think of it as a running tally across the whole population: every year someone spends with noise-broken sleep, chronic stress, or a heart condition that noise helped cause counts as part of a healthy year lost, and every year cut from the life of someone who dies early from it counts as a full year lost. Add that up across the millions of people affected and you get the total.

About a third of those 106,500 years comes from those roughly 6,330 early deaths; the rest comes from people living with the harmful health effects of noise pollution. Moreover, just those five decibels would be enough to erase 39 percent of the damage to our collective health caused by our current traffic noise levels.

The share of the total years of healthy life that transportation noise costs the contiguous US each year that a uniform five decibel reduction would remove. Harm covers the seven outcomes assessed, and premature cardiovascular deaths account for about a third of it. Source: Rojas-Rueda 2026, Environmental Research, Section 3.5.

Decreasing traffic noise by five decibels is not out of the question. The levers to accomplish it are the ones already on the agenda of transportation reform advocates: addressing what the road surface is made of, how fast cars travel over it, how many cars there are, and how many trips happen by foot, bike or transit instead. 

Rolling noise rises with speed, and automobile volume matters because noise is energy and energy adds up. A repaving contract, a speed limit, a road diet, a bus lane: each of these is also a noise decision, whether or not anyone at the meeting says the word “noise.”

Recommended Car Noise Pollution is Worse in Redlined Neighborhoods — And Not Just for Humans Kea Wilson December 6, 2023

I should be straight about what my study does not do. It does not tell you which combination of those measures gets a specific corridor to five decibels, or what that would cost. Nobody has done that at city scale in the US, partly because we do not have source-specific noise maps to work from. That work is still waiting.

But we do know that harmful transportation noise is not distributed equally. In the most socially vulnerable fifth of American communities, 1,940 deaths related to it happen each year. In the least vulnerable fifth, 849. 

Exposure drives the gap: 45 percent of residents in the most vulnerable communities live with traffic noise above 45 decibels, compared to 20 percent in the least. The communities enduring the most noise endure more of the disease that noise aggravates.

Who’s listening

None of this appears in your agency’s dashboard because nobody reports it.  

Congress defunded the EPA’s noise office in 1982. The Noise Control Act of 1972 is still law, but it has gone unenforced for four decades. HUD’s noise standards for federally supported housing were written in 1979 and have not been revised since.

The European Union, by contrast, has required its member states to map noise since 2002 and now ranks it among the top three environmental health risks on the continent.

Recommended The Other Type of Car Pollution That Harms Us All Kea Wilson September 14, 2020

Still, it’s important to note that the U.S. is not short on data about transportation noise. Two researchers at the University of Washington built a national transportation noise exposure map from federal data, which is what made my study possible in the first place. What is missing is anyone with a mandate to publish that data on a schedule, and say what it means for health. 

That fix needs no new legislation. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics already holds the inputs. That is the federal ask, and right now, the federal government is slow to answer. 

The nearer-term move is smaller and it belongs to the people who are likely reading this: everyday advocates and policymakers. When you write the memo for a road diet, a pavement specification, a speed limit change or a transit priority project, the crash numbers are already in it. Put the noise numbers in the same paragraph. Every state in the contiguous US has its own figure now.

We have spent forty years treating traffic noise as a complaint to be filed. But it is a health exposure that is killing us — and we can make better decisions now. 

Betraying MAHA, Senate GOP farm bill would erase progress on regenerative agriculture Anthony Lacey September 17, 2026 Anne Schechinger, M.S. September 17, 2026 Overview

• Regenerative agriculture is part of the Make America Healthy Again agenda that top Trump administration officials often tout.
• Conservation funding for regenerative practices from one program decreased by over $400 million in 2025.
• House and Senate Republicans are trying to cut conservation funding in the farm bill, which would lead to even less money for regenerative agriculture.

Leaders in the Make America Healthy Again movement like to tout their support for regenerative agriculture as a way to cut farm pollution and pesticide use, among other benefits. 

But Senate Republicans’ farm bill includes drastic funding cuts that would stall progress made by farmers adopting regenerative agriculture practices, undermining MAHA’s goal.

The practices include cover crops and riparian buffers. These efforts can help decrease air pollution, including nitrous oxide emissions, and increase farm resilience and profitability, while also improving the environment. Although they need reform, these programs help reduce agriculture’s climate emissions and water pollution, add to farm resilience and improve food safety.

Considerable progress had been made in farmers adopting regenerative agriculture practices, thanks to increased funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. But that progress had already started to slide backward when conservation funding for regenerative practices from just one program decreased by over $400 million between 2024 and 2025. 

The Senate bill would make a bad situation even worse. The bill cuts over $2 billion from two of the nation’s most widely used conservation programs – the Agriculture Department’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, and the Conservation Stewardship Program, or CSP. The programs give farmers and ranchers incentives to implement conservation practices on their land, including regenerative practices.

Last year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., leader of the MAHA movement, announced the administration’s MAHA plan, which laid out a clear vision for EQIP and CSP. The plan pointed to efforts aimed at “empowering farmers and keeping solutions voluntary by expanding programs like” the two conservation programs. 

Kennedy continues to highlight the benefits of regenerative agriculture and why these conservation programs are successful.

Instead, Senate Republicans’ farm bill joins the House counterpart in committing to cuts in funding for these programs – despite their growing popularity.

If the cuts became law, there would be considerably fewer regenerative practices on farms and fewer environmental and climate benefits – and thousands of farmers would be turned away from conservation funding. 

Progress is being undone

Much more funding went to farmers for regenerative practices in 2023 and 2024, thanks to the IRA. But that decreased substantially in 2025, during the Trump administration, and will continue to go down if the farm bill cuts are adopted. 

The 2022 IRA established almost $20 billion in new funding for farmers through multiple conservation programs. This conservation funding was required to go to farmers for regenerative agriculture. Because of the additional funding, total EQIP obligations to farmers went up, from $1.1 billion in 2022 to $1.5 billion in 2023, and then even higher, to $2.5 billion in 2024. 

Many of the climate-smart practices that farmers received IRA funding for in 2023 and 2024 were regenerative agriculture practices like cover crops, reduced or no tillage, and nutrient management. 

EWG has identified a list of 43 regenerative agriculture EQIP practices that lessen climate emissions from farming and help farmers become more resilient to extreme weather. 

In the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, congressional Republicans retained the extra conservation funding from the IRA, but removed the requirement that it be spent on regenerative practices. Now lawmakers are going back on this promise and attempting to cut conservation funding. 

EQIP obligations for regenerative practices on EWG’s list went up in 2023 and 2024 but then dropped in 2025. The USDA under the Trump administration designated significantly less total EQIP money in 2025 at $1.8 billion. 

Obligations for regenerative practices went from $415.9 million in 2022 to $546.0 million in 2023 then all the way to $1.18 billion in 2024, before decreasing to $773.6 million in 2025. That means regenerative funding fell over $400 million between 2024 and 2025. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. EQIP funding for regenerative practices went up in 2023 and 2024 before decreasing in 2025. 

Image

Source: EWG, from USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS, Financial Assistance Program Data

Additionally, the number of regenerative practices that were among the top 10 that received the most money went up in 2023 and 2024 but down in 2025. Four of the top 10 practices were regenerative in 2023, while five were regenerative in 2024, and only four were regenerative in 2025. 

Farmers received more funding in 2023 than they did in 2022 for 29 of the regenerative practices on EWG’s list. Then in 2024, farmers received more money for 33 practices than they had in 2023. But that dropped in 2025 – farmers only collected more money for 16 of the practices in 2025 than in 2024, meaning that 60% of the regenerative practices lost money in 2025 compared to 2024. 

Funding for some of the regenerative practices declined steeply in 2025. Cover crops were the top paid EQIP practice every year from 2022 through 2025. But spending for cover crops went down by half, from $352.7 million in 2024 to $176.3 million in 2025. 

There were also three regenerative practices that didn’t get any funding at all in 2025: strip cropping, contour buffer strips, and herbaceous wind barriers. And four other practices got less than $100,000 each nationally: contour orchard and other perennial crops, filter strips, riparian herbaceous cover, and salinity and sodic soil management. 

As EWG has found, among all conservation practices, some of these unfunded and low-funded practices have the biggest potential for reducing climate emissions. 

The majority of states also lost money for regenerative EQIP practices in 2025. There were 54 states and territories that got payments for regenerative practices in 2025, but of those, 43 had less funding for regenerative practices in 2025 than in 2024. Only 11 states had more money in 2025 than in 2024. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. The 10 states with the biggest losses in regenerative EQIP funding between 2024 and 2025.

Image

Source: EWG, from USDA, NRCS Financial Assistance Program Data

MAHA’s pilot program won’t have much of an impact

While the Trump administration claims to care about regenerative agriculture, this analysis shows that funding for regenerative practices actually went down during the first year of the administration. 

The administration’s only real action to support regenerative agriculture was establishing the Regenerative Pilot Program, or RPP. But the program prioritizes a small amount of conservation funding to regenerative practices, without providing any new funding for them. 

The RPP prioritizes EQIP and CSP funding for regenerative practices, with $400 million going to regenerative practices through EQIP and $300 million through CSP. However, RPP only includes 15 primary regenerative practices funded through EQIP, which is much fewer than the 43 practices on EWG’s regenerative list.  

And $400 million for regenerative practices may not actually change how any of the EQIP funding is spent. Over $400 million already went to farmers for these practices in previous years: $775.9 million for the 15 primary RPP practices in 2024, and $470.8 million for those practices in 2025. 

Assigning $400 million to a list of practices that were already receiving over $400 million a year means the program won’t increase funding for these practices at all. 

The House and Senate Republican farm bills even block the implementation of the RPP as it was designed by prohibiting funding from going to testing soil health or whole-farm planning. Farmers and ranchers looking to access the regenerative market would have to pay for their own testing, rather than get help from the federal government.

USDA conservation funding must be protected

When federal conservation programs have adequate funding, more farmers sign up and put the money toward the most environmentally beneficial and cost-effective regenerative agriculture practices. But the House and Senate Republican farm bill proposals would further reduce funding for the EQIP and CSP.

The Senate Republican farm bill, which recently passed out of the Agriculture Committee along party lines, would leave more than 56,500 valid farmer applications unfunded by EQIP over the next few fiscal years. Many of those unfunded applications would be for regenerative practices. 

The bill would undermine efforts to advance regenerative agriculture, running counter to the MAHA agenda.

The farm bill instead must maintain conservation funding, especially for regenerative practices. Farmers and ranchers have been promised this money – Congress shouldn’t take it away. 

Restoring funding for EQIP and CSP would not only reduce agriculture’s environmental and climate impact. It would also provide reliable support to tens of thousands of farmers and potentially reduce the costs of ad hoc disaster assistance and crop insurance payouts covered by American taxpayers. 

Big tobacco made Lunchables to hook kids on highly processed food Anthony Lacey September 16, 2026

Lunchables have been popular since the 1980s, giving kids a quick meal on the go. 

But most parents don’t know who had a hand in creating them and getting kids hooked: Big Tobacco. The make-your-own lunch kits were developed by Kraft General Foods, then owned by Philip Morris. And Philip Morris brought more than money to the table. 

The tobacco giant also brought the insight and strategies it had used to sell cigarettes, according to recent research. And it applied the marketing tools and formulation savvy it had developed over decades to making food more enticing.

Tobacco expands into the food industry

The tobacco industry consolidated in the 1980s through a series of strategic mergers and acquisitions of huge food companies. 

In 1985, Philip Morris purchased General Foods. Three years later, it acquired Kraft. And in 1989, the two companies were merged into Kraft General Foods. Around the same time, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company acquired Nabisco.

In a recent study in the American Journal of Public Health, previously undisclosed internal Philip Morris documents revealed the purpose of the company’s food acquisitions: to create new ways to profit in the food business using classic tobacco industry tactics.

Creating products with pleasure and appeal

According to researchers, Philip Morris focused on two specific ideas.

The first was prioritizing products for consumer pleasure and appeal. The company called this “consumer-driven product development.” 

To sell cigarettes, the company used consumer research to refine their taste, sensation and delivery – and make them so enjoyable people would want to buy them again and again. 

When it came to selling food, the brand’s product developers started by asking what consumers wanted most. Focus groups found that kids wanted “control over their lunch” and “permission to play with their food,” while busy parents wanted a “last-minute lunch” that was “better than junk food.” Lunchables checked all the boxes. 

Over time, new product lines like “Lunchables with Pizza” were engineered to maximize pleasure, novelty and overall appeal. 

Providing options for health-conscious consumers

Philip Morris’ second idea was what study authors described as a “better for you” strategy.

In 1964, cigarette sales dropped after the surgeon general linked smoking to lung cancer, chronic bronchitis and emphysema. 

In response, Philip Morris introduced filtered and lower-tar cigarettes. The goal was to regain public trust by providing a product that spoke to consumer concerns about health and made some cigarettes seem safer than they actually were.

The company later applied the same playbook to Lunchables. In 1995, the company introduced Low-Fat Lunchables and marketed them as a “healthier” choice to consumers who were concerned about childhood obesity. Parents who may have said no to regular Lunchables suddenly had fewer reasons to turn them down.

But making Low-Fat Lunchables wasn’t as simple as removing fat. To preserve the flavor kids expected, Philip Morris added artificial chemicals – and an “all natural” label to ease any concerns. 

The company also enlisted tobacco scientists with expertise in flavor and consumer research and used sophisticated brain-wave testing, called electroencephalography, to study how people responded to different foods. 

As one researcher put it, Philip Morris used “cigarette science” to design its foods. 

Same playbook, different industry

Eventually, Big Tobacco faced lawsuits and public scrutiny over the harms caused by cigarettes. But by then, researchers say, its product development and marketing strategies had already helped shape today’s ultra-processed food, or UPF, landscape.  

Today, evidence linking UPF to poor health continues to grow. Studies have linked diets high in these foods to conditions including Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer and even dementia. 

With UPF making up an estimated 73% of the food supply, they are not easy to avoid. And the food industry has only become more advanced in creating and marketing products with appeal. Research shows that some UPF even have addictive properties. 

This puts parents in a tough spot at the grocery store – especially when they’re tempted to reach for convenient options they know their kids will actually eat.

Policies are needed to protect public health

Public attitudes toward UPF have begun to shift, much as attitudes toward cigarettes did decades ago.

Yet the Food and Drug Administration continues to delay releasing its definition of UPF, due in part to industry pressure. A legal definition would open the door for policies like front-of-package labels or school nutrition standards that could help people eat healthier.

In the absence of federal action, states are stepping up.

Last year, California enacted a landmark law removing the most harmful UPF from school meals. Now a bill awaits the governor’s signature that would create a non-ultra-processed-certified seal to help shoppers spot less-processed foods at the grocery store.

What you can do now

Avoiding UPF altogether isn’t realistic for most people – the food industry has made sure of that. But it can help to understand what’s behind the marketing so you can make informed choices for your family.

Labels like “low-fat” or “all natural” don't always tell the full story. Check ingredient lists and nutrition facts, usually found on the back of food packages. Look for more whole foods and avoid longer lists of additives and chemicals you probably wouldn’t find in a home kitchen.

EWG’s Food Scores can help make that easier. The database lets you compare more than 150,000 foods and beverages using ratings based on nutrition, ingredient concerns and degree of processing. If you’re on the go, you can use EWG’s Healthy Living™ App.

Nicole Pajer is a freelance journalist.

Areas of Focus Food Ultra-Processed Foods Children’s Health Food Chemicals Guest Authors Nicole Pager (for EWG) September 17, 2026

There is very little authorities in Nepal could have done to prevent the deaths and devastation caused by the flash flood on its border with Tibet in late August, scientists with the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group have said.

Launching a study that highlighted the role of climate change in causing the glacial rock and ice collapse that triggered the Himalayan flood, WWA co-founder Friederike Otto told reporters that “no amount of local adaptation can fully shield vulnerable people downstream from this scale of destruction”.

The findings released on Thursday are likely to strengthen Nepal’s case for emergency support from the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. Its board members met informally on Wednesday to discuss whether to grant the country a maximum of $20 million towards its estimated $4.8 billion cost of recovery and reconstruction, but no decision has yet been taken.

Nepal’s foreign minister Shisir Khanal told Climate Home News last week that the destructive flood was “exactly the kind of climate-driven catastrophe the Fund was created to address”.

Hard to predict

The WWA study found that rock-ice avalanches are very hard to predict and that moving people out of areas vulnerable to such floods is difficult as their livelihoods revolve around the rivers along which the floods travel.

The recent disaster began on the morning of August 26, when an avalanche started falling beneath a glacier. This caused huge amounts of rocks and glacier ice to fall over a kilometre to a valley floor, where they then picked up more rock and ice and became a flood of debris heading downhill and downstream along the border of Nepal and Tibet.

The torrent entered the narrow Lhende Khola gorge and crashed through the busy Gyirong port border crossing at 170 kilometres an hour. It continued many kilometres downstream before eventually turning from rock and ice to water and slowing down.

The flood swept through villages, roads, bridges and hydropower stations, killing over 1,300 people in Nepal with more than 5,000 still missing. The flood also killed at least 40 people in Chinese-run Tibet.

Those on higher ground away from the river mainly survived but the flood’s speed meant that many people received no warning to seek higher ground or shelter.

While Nepal has early warning systems for flooding caused by rain and glacial lake outbursts, the WWA study noted that rock-ice avalanches are complex and understudied, with methods to monitor them still being explored.

Co-author Walter Immerzeel, mountain hydrology professor at Utrecht University, told journalists that with current methods, the disaster could not have been predicted.

But, he said, in the future it may be possible to use remote sensing techniques to analyse glaciers and rocks to generate a warning before a collapse occurs.

A technique called radar interferometry can detect hotspots which should be monitored with field-based sensors and drones, he said, adding that early warning systems could be installed in these areas using seismometers, water-level measurements and CCTV.

Because doing this for thousands of glaciers across the Himalayas would be difficult, authorities could monitor only the rock and ice faces that are a danger to the river valleys with the most people and infrastructure in them, he added. But this would still require lots of investment together with international collaboration and coordination, he warned.

The study found that another potential adaptation strategy – restricting development in flood-prone river valleys – is socially, economically and politically difficult.

The scientists said habitable land is scarce in these steep river valleys and economic activities like transport and hydropower generation are dependent on the river itself.

Madhab Uprety, a Nepali scientist from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said that, while new development should assess the risks of floods, many existing communities and buildings are already at risk.

Loss and damage

Otto said the flood should be discussed in the context of loss and damage as “there is no doubt that climate change is one of the drivers” and “it’s also one of the types of events that are absolutely outside of the limits we can possibly adapt to”.

As well as the deaths, a Nepali government’s assessment has found that a large amount of infrastructure was damaged, including more than 7,500 homes, 105 bridges, 48 public buildings, 47 cultural heritage assets, 18 schools, 13 hydropower facilities, seven health facilities, and numerous shops, hotels, restaurants, irrigation systems and farms. Over 30,000 people were affected.

Developing countries have called for the loss and damage fund’s board to hold an emergency meeting to discuss how to respond to Nepal’s request for funding. Instead of a full board meeting though, board members met only informally and online on Wednesday, Climate Home News understands. A source with knowledge of discussions said the informal nature of the meeting meant they were not able to take decisions or agree on next steps, which have been left up to the board’s co-chairs.

• Sep 9, 2026 Finance Foreign minister: Nepal needs “meaningful” international support to face climate threats Following its recent Himalayan flooding disaster, the South Asian nation is seeking urgent help from a new UN climate fund, appealing for “stronger global solidarity” Read more
• Sep 2, 2026 Finance Loss and damage fund urged to hold crisis meeting on Nepal The new fund is coming under pressure from developing nations to respond quickly to climate disasters rather than just financing longer-term projects Read more
• Apr 2, 2026 News Nepal’s EV revolution pays off as oil crisis causes pain at the pumps Import subsidies, abundant hydropower and charging investments have spurred EV adoption, with electric vehicles now making up about three-quarters of new car sales Read more

Speaking before that meeting started, Nepali climate negotiator Manjeet Dhakal said he had “heard of an extremely positive response” to Nepal’s request from board members. “Hopefully there will be something – a decision that the fund will do for exactly the reason that the fund was established,” he said.

Ajay Mathur, former Indian climate negotiator and now head of The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, told a separate press briefing on Wednesday that the Nepal flood disaster would push loss and damage higher up the agenda of international climate talks, particularly if the United Nations Secretary-General decides to champion the cause at the UN General Assembly in New York next week.

Murat Kurum, Turkish environment minister and president-designate of COP31, told Climate Home News last week that he would be “pleased” if the fund could support Nepal and that he will keep calling in every speech for countries to give money to the loss and damage fund.

Jennifer Morgan, former German climate envoy and now a senior fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, called for the loss and damage fund – which currently has around $630 million in contributions – to be topped up with new pledges from governments as well as solidarity levies on things like luxury air travel, super-rich individuals and fossil fuel firms’ windfall profits.

The post Nepal flood destruction shows “limits to adaptation”, scientists say appeared first on Climate Home News.

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• Flatlining fossils
• Clean-energy growth matches power demand
• Which states led the clean-power shift?
• Fall in oil and gas consumption continues
• Rapid emission growth from heavy industry continues
• New investments in coal 
• Outlook for India’s emissions
• About the data

A surge in clean energy has kept carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in check across India’s power sector, with no growth from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026.

This guest post is by:

Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) 

Anubha Aggarwal, India analyst at CREA

This is the first time in more than 50 years that there has been no growth in India’s coal power over a two-year period, even as electricity demand grew overall.

At the same time, both oil and gas consumption have fallen across the nation for two years in a row, helping alleviate the shock of the Hormuz crisis.

Nevertheless, the new six-monthly analysis for Carbon Brief shows that India’s emissions grew by 3.7% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, due to increases from steel, cement and other sectors.

Other key findings for the first half of 2026 include:

• India’s power-sector emissions flatlined at 2024 levels, after a 2.2% decline in the first half of 2025 and a 2.3% rise in the same period this year.
• Clean energy met all of the 7% rise in India’s electricity demand over the two years, adding 63 terawatt hours (TWh), equivalent to the total demand of Switzerland.
• India has added 77 gigawatts (GW) of solar in this two-year period, helping meet 60% of the rise in electricity demand overall.
• While fossil-fuel generation stagnated, generators added 8.5GW of new coal capacity, leading to fewer running hours and increased costs to electricity consumers.
• CO2 emissions from oil and gas fell by 7% year-on-year, extending a reduction that began in 2025, despite higher demand for road transport fuels.
• Steel and cement emissions grew by 8% year-on-year, reaching a 23% share of India’s total CO2 in the first half of 2026. 

If the pace of India’s clean-energy expansion is to continue, it will need to upgrade its electricity grid, rapidly build out energy storage and boost the flexibility of coal power.

While clean-energy expansion is covering most or all of India’s power-demand growth, the fossil-fuel industry continues to pursue major capital investments.

This includes large amounts of new coal-power capacity, ambitious plans for the conversion of coal-to-chemicals and efforts to boost domestic coking coal production for the steel sector.

While CO2 output from the power sector is flat, with oil and gas in decline, India’s emissions still went up due to the contribution from industry.

India lags behind its competitors – including most large emerging economies – when it comes to electrifying its industrial sector.

Faster progress would enable clean electricity to substitute for fossil fuels in industry, as well as for power, offering the potential for India to cut its emissions overall.

Flatlining fossils

Last year, India’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement grew at their slowest pace in two decades, according to previous analysis for Carbon Brief.

This sharp slowdown was due to rapid clean-energy growth and flat oil demand, combined with rising emissions from steel and cement.

The first half of 2026 marks a continuation of these trends.

Most strikingly, the ongoing surge in clean-energy generation means that emissions have flatlined in India’s power sector for two years, as shown in the figure below.

Power-sector CO2 was the same in the first half of 2026 as two years earlier, with a small decline in 2025 having been reversed over the same period this year.

For further details, see: About the data.

Beyond electricity generation, India’s key emitting sectors continued to see divergent trends in the first half of 2026, as some saw ongoing decline while others reached new heights.

This is shown in the figure below, which compares year-on-year changes in emissions during the first half of 2026 with the same periods in 2025, 2024 and the average for 2021-23.

Specifically, emissions grew by 2.3% in the power sector, reversing last year’s decline, while demand for gas and oil products fell for another year.

The biggest increases were for steel and cement, where emissions growth accelerated to 8% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, well above the recent trend.

For further details, see: About the data. Clean-energy growth matches power demand

The period from the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2026 saw the largest increase in non-fossil power generation on record in India.

This enabled fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions from the sector to stay flat, even as electricity consumption increased.

Indeed, this is the first time in more than 50 years that there has been no growth in coal power over a two-year period, even as electricity demand grew overall, as shown below.

For further details, see: About the data.

Over this two-year period, India’s total power generation increased by 7%, some 63TWh, equal to the total consumption of Singapore or Switzerland.

The additional power requirement of 63TWh was met entirely by clean energy. Solar grew by 44TWh, alongside growth from wind (13TWh), nuclear (7TWh) and hydro (8TWh).

Together, clean-energy sources added 70TWh over two years, more than the net increase in demand.

(For comparison, China’s nuclear, wind and solar output increased by 485TWh in 2025.)

The figure below shows that new investments are more than sufficient to maintain this trend, as added power generation from new clean power capacity has stayed above average demand growth for the past 18 months.

For further details, see: About the data.

Over the past two years, India added 77GW of new solar capacity, 11GW of wind, 5GW of hydro and 0.6GW of nuclear capacity.

Solar power continues to dominate clean-energy growth, but, collectively, the other non-fossil sources still contributed 40% of the overall increase in generation. 

One factor in electricity demand growth in 2026 is the El Niño, which delayed the monsoon and intensified heatwaves, driving up cooling demand.  

India is accelerating investment in energy storage, which will support further growth in clean power. The National Electricity Plan projected a requirement of 82 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy storage capacity by 2026-27 and 411GWh by 2031-32.

As of May 2026, the government has issued tenders for around 272GWh of energy storage capacity, including 142GWh of pumped hydro and 133GWh of battery storage systems. Current capacity is 7.5GWh of battery storage and around 60GWh of pumped hydro.

Which states led the clean-power shift?

The fall in power generation from fossil fuels from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026 was concentrated in a few states.

Gujarat saw both the largest reduction in fossil-fuel generation and the largest expansion in clean power, as shown in the figure below.

For further details, see: About the data.

After Gujarat, the largest increases in clean-power generation were seen in Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, which also saw reductions in power generation from fossil fuels.

Several other states saw declines in fossil-fuel generation due to higher net imports, rather than local clean power. These included Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Punjab. 

Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh also succeeded in increasing clean-power generation faster than power demand, thereby contributing to keeping fossil fuel-based power generation stable nationwide across the two-year period. However, they exported much of the increase and consequently saw local increases in power generation from fossil fuels.

The two states with the largest increases in power demand, Maharashtra and Telangana, managed to almost match the rise with growth in clean-power generation.

Fall in oil and gas consumption continues

India’s oil consumption continued to fall during the first half of 2026, dropping 1.3% year-on-year, a slight acceleration from the 0.7% reduction in the same period last year.

While diesel and petrol consumption continued to grow, oil consumption was pulled down overall by declines in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), petcoke (a solid derivative of oil used in the cement industry) and industrial feedstocks. Growth of aviation fuel use eased.

Diesel consumption growth accelerated from 1.8% to 4.1% in the first half of the year, supported by higher freight movement and increased agricultural demand, as the delayed monsoon led to greater use of diesel-powered irrigation.

Petrol consumption returned to growth, increasing 6.9% year-on-year after zero growth in the same period in 2025, reflecting sustained growth in passenger and two-wheeler mobility.

A significant increase in ethanol blending shaved a full percentage point off the growth of petrol consumption. India achieved its 20% ethanol blending target five years ahead of schedule in 2025-26. (Ethanol blending has faced public opposition.)

Electric vehicle (EV) adoption in India is also gaining momentum, with EVs adopted in a widening range of categories.

In Delhi, an EV policy was launched to accelerate electrification of the vehicle fleet, with a particular focus on two-wheelers, three-wheelers (auto rickshaws), commercial vehicles and high-mileage segments, alongside expanded charging infrastructure. Higher EV adoption rates will moderate the growth in emissions from petrol consumption in India. 

In contrast, aviation fuel demand growth slowed down from 5% to 2%. The slowdown coincided with the strait of Hormuz and wider crisis, which disrupted international aviation through temporary airspace closures and flight cancellations to several Middle Eastern destinations. Elevated aviation fuel prices also increased airline operating costs, contributing to lower fuel demand. 

LPG consumption contracted by 7%, after 5.7% growth in the same period last year, amid disruptions in global LPG markets following the Hormuz crisis.

Petcoke consumption fell 9.9%, more than reversing a 9.3% increase in the same period last year. Rising petcoke prices encouraged cement manufacturers to switch to coal.

Consumption of other petroleum products continued to drop, although the pace of decline moderated from 14% in 2025 to 9% in 2026. 

Industrial feedstock use was affected by shortages and price increases.

Naphtha demand contracted as import prices nearly doubled and domestic prices increased by around 60%, prompting petrochemical manufacturers to reduce operating rates and suppress demand for imported naphtha.

Bitumen consumption remained subdued due to slower road construction, driven by persistent land acquisition challenges and higher bitumen costs.

Meanwhile, higher light diesel oil (LDO) prices and shortage of LPG led some industrial consumers to switch back to furnace oil in boilers and heaters, despite the higher air pollutant emissions. Supply of fuel oil to industry increased for the same reason.

Rapid emission growth from heavy industry continues

Steel and cement output in India grew by 8% and 9%, respectively, year-on-year in the first half of 2026, despite rising input prices and weakening profitability.

The growth in steel and cement was supported in part by increased investment in India’s real estate sector, especially in the second quarter. Steel consumption growth outpaced production, implying that inventories built up last year were tapped.

Despite domestic demand growth, profit margins of Indian steel and cement manufacturers remained under pressure for much of the period due to elevated raw material costs – particularly imported coking coal – and higher freight costs stemming from the Hormuz crisis.  

The pressure on prices could dampen growth. Cement prices are expected to rise to levels last seen in the 2021-22 financial year, when Russia’s decision to cut back gas exports to Europe drove a sharp increase in fossil-fuel prices.

Outside the steel, cement and power sectors, coal-consumption growth accelerated to 14% in the first half of 2026, up from 3% last year, as the LPG shortage prompted a shift to coal.

Gas shortages resulted in some additional burning of coal for cooking in March and April. The government officially authorised the hospitality industry to use coal, refuse-derived fuel pellets, biomass and kerosene for one month.

The ceramic and tile industry also requested that the government allow the use of coal gasifiers amid the gas shortage. State governments including Delhi NCR, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Maharashtra also allowed industries to temporarily use alternative fuels, including coal. 

India’s industrial energy use is dominated by fossil fuels, particularly coal. Indian industry has the second-lowest electrification rate in the G20, as shown in the figure below. The share of electricity in total energy consumption in the sector also lags the world average, in terms of both current levels and the rate of increase.

For further details, see: About the data.

The current low rates of electricity use in Indian industry imply that there is major potential for electrification, using technologies and processes already in place in other countries.

New investments in coal 

While the clean-power expansion is starting to meet most or all of India’s electricity demand growth, there are still large investment plans across the coal supply chain.

Some 43GW of coal-power capacity was under construction at the end of June. Additional coal-power capacity is seen as necessary to meet increasing peak loads, even as solar power and energy storage are already playing a role in covering daytime and evening peak demand, respectively. The expansion of energy storage will increase this contribution.

Outside the power sector, India has major ambitions to produce chemical-industry products, such as fertiliser and plastic feedstock, from coal through coal gasification, in pursuit of energy security.

The government is targeting a capacity to process 100m tonnes of coal per year in the next four years, despite the technology for coal gasification still being nascent in India. At present, the only operational use of coal gasification is at Jindal Steel Limited, which is reportedly using syngas in its steel-making process. 

Meanwhile, India plans to reduce its average CO2 emissions per tonne of steel by 25% by 2025-26, mainly by reducing the share of coal-based steelmaking.

At the same time, the government is aiming to increase the use of domestic coking coal, which it notified in January this year as a “critical and strategic mineral”. Coal miners and steel companies are reportedly planning to establish additional washeries for coking coal to make it suitable for blending with imported coal for use in steel production. 

India is also looking to invest in new coal mines in the near future. 

These continued investments in coal gasification, domestic coking coal and new coal mining capacity could lock in coal use across industry for several decades.  

Outlook for India’s emissions

Over the two-year period from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026, India has achieved its largest clean-energy expansion on record.

As a result, power-demand growth has been met entirely by clean electricity and CO2 emissions in the sector have flatlined.

This expansion of clean energy also allowed a reduction in fossil-fuel imports for power generation, with the use of imported coal falling 38% and the use of gas by 35%, supporting the energy security aims of the government and reducing exposure to the Hormuz shock.

In order to keep the clean-energy growth going, India would need to overcome multiple obstacles, including expansion of the electricity transmission network, improvements in grid flexibility to accommodate variable renewables and the timely completion of new projects. 

For example, renewable power projects totalling 5.3GW missed completion deadlines and are having to pay penalties to the grid operator in order to retain network access.

Curtailment has emerged as an issue, particularly for projects relying on interstate power transmission, pointing to the need to upgrade the network. (Curtailment refers to electricity generation that is “wasted” because it cannot be accommodated by the power network.)

Another obstacle to be overcome if clean energy is to keep growing will be making coal-power plants more flexible, so they can ramp down during high renewable output.

A flexibility plan for coal-power plants has been delayed by more than a year due to persistent regulatory bottlenecks, contributing to the curtailment of renewable energy. 

Expanding energy storage has the potential to ease grid and flexibility constraints, while reducing or eliminating the need for adding thermal-power capacity to meet peak loads.

The Central Electricity Authority has proposed that, after June 2027, all new government-owned solar and wind projects would have “mandatory” two-hour battery storage. (This mirrors a policy that was in place in China until early 2025 and was subsequently scrapped, in favour of more market-based approaches.)

For oil and gas, India’s consumption has been flatlining for the past two years, after half a century of continuous growth that was only briefly interrupted by Covid-19.

This has reduced the impacts of the Hormuz crisis on the country’s trade balance, helping close the gap between supply and consumption. But it has entailed disruptive shifts in many oil-dependent sectors.

For example, high prices and fuel shortages due to the Hormuz crisis led state governments to reverse their orders banning the use of dirtier fuels such as fuel oil, kerosene and coal in industries and commercial establishments.

Meanwhile, EV adoption has also begun to influence oil consumption. 

Despite the progress in the power sector and reductions in oil consumption, India’s total emissions went up over the past two years due to a major increase in industrial emissions.

Low levels of electricity use in industry mean that growing industrial output results in increasing direct fossil-fuel use and emissions.

Unless the rate of industrial electrification picks up, increases in heavy industry output will continue to translate into increases in fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

About the data

This analysis is based on official monthly data for fuel consumption, industrial production and power generation from different ministries and government institutes. 

Coal-power emissions are estimated by combining plant-level coal consumption from the Central Electricity Authority’s (CEA) monthly coal reports with data on the calorific value and emission factors of coal used at different power plants from the CEA’s CO2 baseline database.

For each station and month, total coal consumption is split into domestic and imported coal using the imported share of coal receipts over a trailing two-month window, found to best reproduce the actual split in data available for 2023.

Consumption is converted to CO2 using each plant’s station-specific gross calorific value from the CEA database and IPCC emission factors for domestic coal, imported coal and lignite. The national-average calorific value is used for recently added plants, for which data is not available in the baseline database. 

Coal use at steel and cement plants, as well as process emissions from cement production, are estimated using production indices from the index of eight core industries released monthly by the Office of Economic Adviser, assuming that changes in total fossil-fuel use follow production volumes. These production indices were used to scale fuel use by the sectors in 2022.

To form a basis for using the indices, monthly coal-consumption data for 2022 was constructed for the sectors by combining the annual total coal and petcoke consumption reported in IEA World Energy Balances with monthly production data. This work was set out in a paper by Robbie Andrew, a researcher at Norwegian research institute CICERO, on monthly CO2 emission accounting for India. Monthly petcoke consumption was available from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, while coal consumption by the cement industry was calculated by subtracting petcoke use from total fossil-fuel use.

Annual cement-process emissions up to 2025 were also taken from Andrew’s work and scaled using the production indices. This approach better approximated changes in energy use and emissions reported in the IEA World Energy Balances, than did the amounts of coal reported to have been dispatched to the sectors, showing that production volumes are the dominant driver of short-term changes in emissions.

For other sectors – including aluminium, auto, chemical and petrochemical, paper and plywood, pharmaceutical, graphite electrode, sugar, textile, mining, traders and others – coal consumption is estimated based on data on despatch of domestic and imported coal to end users from statistical reports and monthly reports by the Ministry of Coal, as consumption data is not available.

Coal consumption by “captive” coal-power plants – those supplying power to industrial sites, not to the public electricity network – was calculated based on capacity changes from Global Energy Monitor, assuming constant utilisation, as utilisation has been very stable year-to-year, as calculated from Central Electricity Authority data.

The difference between coal consumption and dispatch is stock changes, which are estimated by assuming that the changes in the amount of coal stored at end-user facilities mirror those at coal mines, with end-user inventories excluding power, steel and cement assumed to be 70% of those at coal mines, based on comparisons between our data and the IEA World Energy Balances.

Stock changes at mines are estimated as the difference between production at and dispatch from coal mines, as reported by the Ministry of Coal.

Coal consumption is estimated in two ways for sectors beyond power, steel and cement. Consumption of domestic coal in these other sectors is taken from the monthly reports by the Ministry of Coal. Their consumption of imported coal is estimated from the total imports of thermal coal reported by consultancy Kpler, by subtracting demand for imports at coal-power plants. The basis for this assumption is that steel and cement industries use little imported thermal coal, according to Ministry of Coal data.

Product-by-product consumption data for petroleum products, as well as gas use by sector, is from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

As the fuel dispatch and consumption data is reported as physical volumes – such as tonnes or litres – calorific values are taken from IEA’s World Energy Balance and CO2 emission factors from 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.

The emissions factor for motor oil or petrol was updated, based on the blending percentage of ethanol each year. The ethanol-blending percentage is as reported by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. 

Calorific values are assigned separately to different fuel types, including domestic and imported coal, anthracite and coke, as well as to petrol, diesel and several other oil products.

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The post Analysis: India’s power-sector emissions flat for two years due to clean-energy surge appeared first on Carbon Brief.

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sanket Jain

Extreme heat and widespread drought related to climate change have been in the headlines this summer everywhere from Europe to the Colorado River Basin to Puerto Rico and Bangladesh. But drought is only the beginning of the problem for drinking water. Scientists say the depleted groundwater supplies that remain will warm by 2.1 degrees C globally by the end of this century – changing their chemistry and leading to contamination. 

And heat is just one concern. Droughts and fluctuating rainfall patterns are also altering groundwater quality. The good news is that around the world, local and regional authorities are experimenting with ways to replenish groundwater, including methods for collecting excess rainfall or surface runoff and channeling it to replenish aquifers. The work is in early stages, but some methods already are showing promise.

Warming water, changing chemistry 

As groundwater warms, dissolved gases become less soluble, while organisms underground can consume oxygen more rapidly. Because many aquifers already contain little oxygen, modest warming could make them even more oxygen-poor. 

In some aquifers, this shift can mobilize naturally occurring contaminants such as arsenic, manganese, and phosphorus from surrounding rocks into groundwater, making it less safe to drink. The extra phosphorus can fuel harmful algal blooms when groundwater eventually flows into rivers and lakes. Warmer groundwater may also favor pathogens linked to waterborne diseases.

Under a stable climate, Earth gets warmer deeper underground because heat from the Earth’s core moves toward the cooler land surface, explained Barret Kurylyk, a professor of civil and resource engineering at Dalhousie University and Canada Research Chair in Coastal Water Resources. 

“In the past few decades, the land surface has warmed due to climate change,” he said. 

As the surface becomes warmer than shallow aquifers, the usual temperature difference reverses, causing heat to move downward toward groundwater. Movement of rain or snow downward can also transfer heat into groundwater, exacerbating the change in groundwater chemistry. 

This heat transfer matters because groundwater accounts for 99% of the Earth’s liquid freshwater, provides about half the world’s drinking water, and supplies nearly 40% of the water used for irrigation. By 2100, an estimated 77-188 million people are expected to live in areas where groundwater exceeds the highest drinking-water temperature acceptable threshold adopted by any country.

What happens after a drought

In the remote Kasanal village in Southern India’s Karnataka state, Santosh Naik says the annual monsoon is no longer enough to fill his two wells. The 38-year-old farmer said that by August 2026, his 60-foot wells were 90% empty, even though they would normally fill within a month of the rains. 

Naik has spent over a decade drilling deeper in search of water. Since 2011, he has dug 14 borewells – narrow, machine-drilled shafts – across his five-acre farm, each about 300 feet underground. Now only three are functioning. But he is not just worried about declining levels. The water quality is changing too, he says.

“Earlier, we used to drink water from borewells and wells, but if you drink that water now, you will definitely fall ill,” he said. 

He added that the entire village has stopped drinking water from its wells. 

Naik grows sugarcane, soybean, peanuts and sorghum, but his harvests have been falling as his water supply has gotten saltier. Since 2020, his annual sugarcane production has been about 80,000 kilograms lower, costing him about 280,000 Indian rupees ($2,935). 

His experience illustrates a broader problem across India. An analysis of 20,994 groundwater observations estimated that about 29% of the study area, including 25% of cropland, had elevated groundwater salinity. 

Changing contaminants 

Scientists confirm that climate extremes can change how water moves through the soil and what it carries. One team monitored 13 groundwater wells across three aquifer systems in Germany for up to eight years. As groundwater levels declined, its molecular composition increasingly resembled that of water draining through the soil. 

Senior study author Gerd Gleixner, a biogeochemist and professor at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, said that during drought, larger pores open up in soils. When heavy rain follows, these pores can carry water rapidly toward groundwater instead of allowing it to move slowly through the upper soil. 

“The problem is that this water that comes down is not supposed to go down directly. It is supposed to go more slowly, so that there is more time for progressive processing in the upper part,” Gleixner said. 

The upper soil normally acts as a kind of “main bioreactor,” processing substances before they reach the groundwater. But rapid flow through these pores can bypass some of this processing, allowing substances from the surface to reach groundwater more directly.

Gleixner said this rapid downward movement can carry unwanted substances from the surface into groundwater, including antibiotics and, potentially, microplastics. 

Scientists are also investigating what happens to groundwater when it is pumped more heavily during droughts. Researchers in California’s San Joaquin Valley analyzed water-quality records from over 3,000 public drinking-water wells over the 2012-2016 drought and the recovery that followed. During the drought, nitrate and total dissolved solids increased in many wells. As pumping intensified, wells drew a larger share of modern-aged groundwater, which was more likely to contain contaminants linked to human activities, such as nitrate. As wetter conditions returned and groundwater levels recovered, many of these changes reversed.

The water people once trusted

Farmer Shivaji Tasgave, 83, no longer trusts the water from a 200-year-old well that served his family for generations after it turned blackish and foul-smelling. 

But when the rains failed to arrive as expected, he was forced to rely on this water to irrigate his crops. Half his peanut and sugarcane failed to grow. 

In his remote Jambhali village in Western India, Tasgave said that almost 150 wells in his neighborhood have become unusable because of deteriorating groundwater quality.

Along coastlines, groundwater quality can change when the balance between freshwater flowing toward the sea and seawater moving inland is disturbed. Under natural conditions, groundwater flows from land toward the sea, creating a pressure that helps keep seawater from moving inland. When that freshwater pressure weakens, seawater can move farther inland into freshwater aquifers.

A team of scientists in Germany found many coastal groundwater systems are vulnerable to this shift. Between 1990 and 2024, they analyzed about 480,000 coastal groundwater monitoring locations worldwide. They found statistically significant groundwater-level changes in 28% of observations over nine-year windows, and 21% over 19-year windows. Declines became more frequent in the last nine years. 

“These declines may reflect a combination of causes, including lower rainfall, drought and reduced groundwater recharge, but also potentially unsustainable groundwater abstraction that exceeds groundwater recharge,” said Annika Nolte, an environmental and data scientist at the University of Bremen, Germany, who led the study.

“Seawater intrusion can make groundwater less suitable or unsuitable for human consumption and may ultimately threaten reliable drinking-water supplies from wells,” she added. 

When saline groundwater is used for irrigation, it can also reduce soil fertility and crop yields. A global meta-analysis found that irrigation with salty water reduced crop yields by 17.3% compared with freshwater irrigation.

Giving groundwater a chance to recover

In many parts of the world, researchers are experimenting with different ways to help aquifers recover. Monitoring groundwater levels and salinity, and improving estimates of present and future groundwater recharge, are essential to determine how much water can be withdrawn without weakening freshwater heads, Nolte said.

In the Netherlands, a solution named "Water Battery" has been operating near the village of Epe since 2015. Water from natural springs is collected in a human-made reservoir and then pumped to infiltration ponds, where it seeps into the groundwater. The water is stored underground, while natural biogeochemical processes improve its quality before the groundwater is extracted.

California has been adopting a similar strategy. Excess surface water can be diverted onto selected farm fields to replenish depleted aquifers, increasing groundwater storage and improving water availability during dry periods. Separate field studies in California almond orchards have also shown that flooding fields during the trees’ dormant winter period, in moderately drained to well-drained soils, has little effect on root production or crop yields. 

Cities are also finding ways to use stormwater effectively. In the Argentine coastal city of Pinamar, researchers evaluated rain gardens, which are shallow, planted areas designed to collect stormwater and let it soak into the ground. Gardens improved groundwater recharge, particularly during low-intensity rains, where recharge efficiency increased more than sixfold. 

Although the approaches differ, the idea remains the same: Instead of moving excess water away, let the ground hold on to it. 

This article first appeared on Yale Climate Connections and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

 

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This article is part of Food Tank’s primer series, “Food Tank Explains.” Each installment unpacks the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping today’s food and agriculture systems, offering clear insights into complex topics. To explore more articles in the series, click here.

The H-2A program allows United States agricultural employers to hire foreign workers temporarily or seasonally when there are insufficient qualified and available U.S. workers.

Since its inception, the H-2A program has grown exponentially. The U.S. Department of State (DOS) issued 44 H-2A visas in the program’s first year in 1987. It has become the nation’s largest temporary visa program, with more than 315,000 visas issued in 2024.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) certified 48,000 H-2A positions in 2005 and more than 398,000 in 2025. H-2A workers now are one sixth of the U.S. agricultural labor force, and data suggest H-2A growth is continuing. In the first half of 2026, DOL certified 17 percent more positions than it did during the same period in 2025.

According to the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), increasing H-2A demand is a direct reflection of the U.S. labor force. H-2A jobs arise from a proven lack of domestic interest in seasonal work, the organization says.

In 2025, U.S. workers applied for less than 0.04 percent of requested positions. “The lack of available labor is among the largest limiting factors of American agriculture,” says Zippy Duvall, AFBF President. “Most Americans don’t want to work on farms.”

To qualify for the H-2A program, agricultural employers must have a temporary or seasonal need for full-time labor. Employers apply for certification from DOL while recruiting U.S. workers for the positions. The employer must demonstrate that enough able, willing, qualified, and available U.S. workers cannot be found and that employing H-2A workers will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers.

The employer then petitions U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Once approved, prospective workers may apply to DOS for H-2A visas. Employers must provide workers with housing, three meals per day, and convenient cooking facilities, and provide or pay for required transportation and travel expenses.

The program’s growth has occurred alongside widespread reports of fraud, labor violations, and worker exploitation. From 2018 through 2023, DOL investigated 2,857 H-2A employers. 84 percent uncovered at least one violation.

Though charging a fee for recruitment is illegal recruiters have charged workers thousands of dollars to secure H-2A jobs. Other schemes have collected money for jobs that do not exist. Documented on-farm violations range from wage theft and inadequate housing to retaliation and dangerous working conditions. Polaris’s Trafficking Hotline identified 2,841 H-2A visa holders who were victims of labor trafficking.

H-2A workers often live in remote camps with limited digital connectivity, Stacy Rhodes of the Agricultural Workers Advocacy Coalition (AWAC), tells Food Tank. This seclusion, coupled with language barriers, and limited access to legal assistance makes reporting abuses difficult.

Workers risk losing employment, immigration status, or future job opportunities if they assert their rights, Maggie Gray, Adelphi University Professor and Author of Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic, tells Food Tank. As a result, H-2A workers are unlikely to advocate for themselves.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reports that DOL’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD), tasked with federal enforcement, is “underfunded and understaffed,” with 800 WHD investigators monitoring 165 million workers. DOS describes oversight of temporary worker programs as “weak,” while EPI calls it “woefully inadequate.”

Stakeholders broadly agree that the H-2A program needs reform but differ over what those reforms should address. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union opposes any increase in the program, while some farmers, worried for their labor supply amid a labor shortage, have sought to expand H-2A. House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson, alongside organizations including the American Dairy Coalition, Dairy Business Milk Marketing Cooperative, and the CATO institute, have proposed legislation extending the program to jobs that aren’t seasonal or temporary, like dairy, cattle, and pork producers.

United Farm Workers (UFW) has taken DOL to court, asserting that a rule reducing wages for U.S. farm workers and H-2A workers is unlawful. Meanwhile, other organizations and farmers complain that the cost of H-2A wages, transportation, and housing are too expensive. Increasing fees have hit farmer’s margins in nearly every step of the H-2A filing process, the AFBF describes.

The Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) and UFW focus on changing labor practices within the existing system. EFI certifies farms that meet standards for worker treatment and safety, while UFW has supported policies that would allow H-2A workers greater freedom to change employers without losing legal status.

Others organizations advocate community action. “we need to see more and more communities organizing,” says Gerardo Reyes Chavez of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Rather than settle, he continued, workers and organizers should “set examples with things that actually work through the market.”

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

The post Food Tank Explains: H-2A Visa Program appeared first on Food Tank.

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High Court ruling allows Bille community to argue that Shell is responsible for all relevant oil pollution in the region — including pollution that cannot be traced to one of 106 individually identified spills

A major new dimension has emerged in the long-running litigation over Shell-related oil pollution in Nigeria’s Niger Delta.

On 10 September 2026, Mrs Justice Lambert handed down judgment in Alame & Ors v Shell Plc & Anor [2026] EWHC 2332 (KB).

Much attention has understandably focused on another part of the ruling: allegations that Shell witnesses knowingly relied upon false or misleading factual assertions during the company’s earlier jurisdiction challenge are now to be dealt with as the litigation moves towards trial.

That development was examined in our earlier article, “Shell Nigeria Case Takes a Dramatic Turn: High Court Allows Allegations of Misleading Evidence to Be Tried.”

But the same judgment contains another ruling which may ultimately prove just as significant.

The High Court has rejected Shell’s attempt to prevent the Bille community from advancing what the judgment describes as its “primary” or “all-spills” case.

In simple terms, the claimants will be permitted to argue at the 2027 trial that Shell and its former Nigerian subsidiary are responsible not merely for pollution attributable to 106 specifically identified spills, but for all relevant oil pollution in the Bille region during the period covered by the claims.

That does not mean that the court has decided that Shell is responsible for all such pollution.

It emphatically has not.

What the court has decided is that the claimants are entitled to try to prove that case.

That distinction is crucial.

The case has moved far beyond 106 spills

The Bille litigation concerns oil pollution associated with pipelines, wellheads and other infrastructure in the Niger Delta between 2011 and 2013.

Following earlier procedural battles, the claimants were required to particularise their case in much greater detail.

The resulting pleadings identify 106 individual spills.

But there is a striking detail in the judgment.

Of those 106 spills, 60 had been identified by the defendants and given incident numbers.

A further 46 spills had not been identified by the defendants and were instead identified by the claimants during the forensic process.

Mrs Justice Lambert recorded that the claimants had produced individual annexes dealing with each of the 106 spills and setting out the systemic failures alleged to have caused or contributed to them.

Those alleged failures include matters concerning:

• pipeline and infrastructure integrity;
• leak detection;
• maintenance and repair;
• protection against third-party interference and illegal bunkering;
• spill containment;
• remediation and clean-up.

These remain allegations which Shell is entitled to contest at trial.

But the claimants’ case does not stop with the 106 spills.

The “all-spills” argument

The claimants contend that evidence concerning those identified spills may permit the court to draw wider inferences about pollution in Bille that cannot be attributed to any individually identified incident.

In other words, if contamination is found in an area and cannot be traced to one of the 106 specifically pleaded spills, the claimants want to be able to argue that it nevertheless resulted from another unidentified spill for which the defendants were responsible.

Shell opposed that approach.

The defendants argued that the claimants should be confined to the 106 identified spills and to damage which could be traced back to those specific events.

Had Shell succeeded, pollution that could not be connected to an individually identified spill would potentially have fallen outside the claimants’ case.

Mrs Justice Lambert rejected that restriction.

The claimants are therefore entitled to advance their broader case.

Doughty Street Chambers, whose Joshua Jackson acts for the claimants, summarised the effect of the ruling on 14 September:

the Bille community may argue that Shell is responsible for all oil pollution in the relevant region even where residents cannot identify every individual spill which produced that pollution.

That is a substantial development.

What the judge did — and did not — decide

The ruling should not be misunderstood.

Mrs Justice Lambert has not found that Shell caused every spill in Bille.

She has not found that every area of pollution came from Shell-operated infrastructure.

She has not decided whether sabotage, theft, illegal refining or other third-party activities caused particular spills.

Those are matters for evidence and trial.

The judgment instead deals with whether the claimants are legally and procedurally entitled to put their broader causation case before the court.

The judge concluded that they are.

Her reasoning illustrates why the eventual evidence will matter so much.

If, hypothetically, the evidence relating to the 106 identified spills showed that the defendants were responsible for virtually all of them and there were no credible competing sources for the remaining pollution, that evidence could potentially support an inference concerning unidentified spills.

If, on the other hand, the evidence presented a substantially mixed picture involving different causes and different responsible parties, drawing such a broad inference could become much more difficult.

The claimants therefore have permission to make the argument.

They still have to prove it.

Almost 300,000 documents

There is another important part of the chronology.

According to Doughty Street Chambers, an earlier High Court disclosure order resulted in Shell providing the claimants with almost 300,000 documents by January 2026.

After that disclosure exercise, the claimants were required to provide detailed particulars concerning parent-company liability, fault and causation.

Their expanded pleadings followed.

That sequence matters.

This is no longer a case being argued principally from general assertions about pollution in the Niger Delta.

The approaching trial will take place after a very large disclosure exercise and after years of forensic examination of the underlying events.

The identification by the claimants of 46 additional spills which had apparently not previously been given incident numbers by the defendants provides one indication of what that forensic process has produced.

A second explosive issue sits alongside the pollution case

The same September judgment also dealt with the claimants’ application concerning aggravated damages.

The claimants allege, among other matters, that Shell knowingly relied upon false or misleading factual assertions from witnesses during the jurisdiction proceedings that occupied the English courts between 2016 and 2021.

Shell had been arguing during those proceedings that its Nigerian subsidiary operated independently of the London-based parent company.

The jurisdiction dispute ultimately reached the UK Supreme Court, which in 2021 allowed the Nigerian communities’ claims against Royal Dutch Shell plc — now Shell plc — to proceed in England.

The current claimants now allege that evidence presented during that jurisdiction battle was false or misleading.

They also make allegations concerning the deletion or destruction of relevant evidence.

Again, these are allegations.

There has been no judicial finding that Shell, any Shell witness, or any lawyer deliberately misled a court or improperly destroyed evidence.

Shell contests the allegations.

But Mrs Justice Lambert rejecte

From 106 Known Spills to an Entire Polluted Region: Shell Faces a Much Broader Nigeria Trial in 2027 was first posted on September 16, 2026 at 7:01 pm.
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EWG statement on EPA rollback of PFAS water permit discharge guidance Monica Amarelo September 16, 2026

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency has rescinded critical guidance that helped states use the Clean Water Act National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, to monitor and limit toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” discharges into wastewater.

The move undermines an important tool for preventing PFAS pollution from reaching the nation’s waterways, where it can persist for decades and become a costly, long-term contamination problem.

For wastewater treatment plants, industrial facilities and state permitting authorities, the change raises questions about whether and how PFAS monitoring and discharge limits will be maintained in NPDES permits.

The agency claims its rollback is an effort to address “confusion” and “inconsistent application” across states. But it creates a glaring contradiction in federal policy: If the EPA continues to defend PFAS monitoring requirements in individual permits, including in a recent settlement involving a Massachusetts wastewater treatment plant, why is it withdrawing guidance that helped states implement those protections?

That question matters because PFAS are exceptionally persistent and difficult to remove once they enter the environment. PFAS have been linked to kidney, liver, pancreatic and testicular cancers; as well as immune system suppression, thyroid disease, reduced vaccine efficacy, reproductive and developmental harm, low birth weight, increased cholesterol, weight gain in children and dieting adults, and a growing list of serious health effects.

Preventing these chemicals from entering waterways in the first place is critical to reducing exposure and avoiding the long-term costs of contamination and cleanup.

The following is a statement from Melanie Benesh, Environmental Working Group vice president for government affairs.

Let’s call this what it is: The EPA is doing corporate polluters’ dirty work at the expense of public health.

The EPA has abandoned its mission, choosing to protect industrial polluters rather than the families forced to drink companies’ toxic runoff.

By stripping away Clean Water Act guidance for PFAS discharges, the agency is deliberately blinding state regulators and giving chemical manufacturers permission to pollute without fear of oversight. The EPA is actively tearing down the guardrails that keep PFAS out of our drinking water.

Hiding behind bureaucratic excuses about “process” and “confusion” is insultingly weak. If the EPA was genuinely concerned about procedure, they would finalize binding, enforceable standards today, not erase the only thin line of defense that communities have left.

Families living downstream don’t get a polite administrative memo when cancer-causing chemicals poison their drinking water. They just get the contamination, the medical bills and decades of forever chemicals in their blood.

At a moment when the science on PFAS harm has never been clearer, the EPA is signaling loud and clear to industry that corporate convenience matters more than clean water.

That’s not regulatory housekeeping. That’s putting industry profits over public health.

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The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

Areas of Focus Water Toxic Chemicals Chemical Policy PFAS Chemicals Agency removes critical tool for limiting ‘forever chemicals’ pollution Press Contact Monica Amarelo monica@ewg.org (202) 939-9140 September 16, 2026

I sat down today (and yesterday, and the day before that, and also last week…) to write about trees, as I often do. Backyard trees, specifically ― part of my ongoing fascination with how we can reimagine private land as a public good in our cities. This shouldn’t have been a hard task for me […]

The American Civil Liberties Union and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) today released a new report, Citizenship and the Affordability Agenda: A Path to Better Jobs, Higher Wages, and Prosperity for All, detailing how the mass deportation agenda is exacerbating the affordability crisis by disrupting critical industries, eliminating jobs, weakening workplace protections, and driving up costs for working families. The findings come as communities continue to suffer the impact of mass de-legalization, record levels of immigration arrests and rebound from the economic toll of militarized enforcement operations like Minnesota’s “Operation Metro Surge."

The report finds that a broad path to citizenship would stabilize jobs and prices across the construction, hospitality, and care industries that families depend on while raising wages for all American workers. It also examines how Congress has committed at least $240 billion to immigration enforcement, while cutting funding for programs that help families afford food and health care, including SNAP, Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act subsidies — and in some cases allowing them to expire.

“Deportations make workers poorer and more vulnerable to exploitation by employers,” said Naureen Shah, director of government affairs, equality division at the ACLU. “When ICE continuously raids a community, everyone pays for it – in lost jobs higher prices and damaged businesses. The only immigration agenda that actually improves affordability is one that creates a broad path to citizenship.”

“Working people are paying the price for an immigration system that is destabilizing entire industries and communities and making it easier to exploit workers,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “As this report demonstrates, a broad pathway to citizenship for all would raise wages, create more and better jobs, and strengthen our economy in ways that help all of us. It’s past time to give millions of working people and their families the stability they deserve, and we call on Congress to make citizenship a top priority. Working people know that it’s not an immigrant that stands between them and a good job—it’s the billionaires—and it’s time our laws reflect that.

• Among the report’s key findings: Immigration enforcement enables workplace exploitation. The federal government now spends 91 times more on immigration enforcement than on labor-standards enforcement, which leaves workplaces more dangerous and enables employers to violate wage, safety, and overtime laws while crushing worker organizing. More than a quarter of workers in low-wage industries report minimum-wage violations. While these abuses are highest among immigrant workers, they are widespread enough to suppress pay and standards for all workers in those industries, regardless of immigration status.
• Immigration raids stunt business activity and revenue creation. Immigration raids and enforcement surges have terrified people from going to work, shopping, dining out, and participating in their communities. The report cites an estimated 8.1 billion fewer visits to businesses and between $3 billion and $14 billion in lost annual spending. For example, Minnesota businesses lost $10–$20 million a week during and after “Operation Metro Surge.”
• Mass deportation eliminates jobs held by U.S. citizens. The Economic Policy Institute projects continued pursuit of the administration’s deportation agenda could eliminate nearly 6 million jobs, almost half of which are currently held by U.S. citizens.
• Stripping workers’ legal immigration status is worsening the affordability crisis. The Trump administration’s mass “de-documentation” campaign has stopped work authorization from nearly 2 million people, disrupting key industries like construction and hospitality.
• A broad path to citizenship would create jobs and raise wages. Creating a path to citizenship would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and substantially raise wages for every American worker= by removing immigration status as a tool employers use to suppress pay and silence workers.

This report, published in partnership with the AFL-CIO, is the third in the ACLU’s affirmative vision series, in which policy and legal experts explore how the Trump administration’s immigration agenda has harmed communities nationwide, undermined our democracy, and wreaked havoc on key industries and weakened the American workforce. The series will also outline steps that members of Congress, as well as state and local policymakers, can take to reform the U.S. immigration system and inoculate against future attacks on our rights and safety.

You can read the full report here: https://www.aclu.org/publications/citizenship-and-the-affordability-agenda-a-path-to-better-jobs-higher-wages-and-prosperity-for-all

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
September 16, 2026

First Mining Claims Filed in Lands Cut from Bears Ears National Monument – 9.16.26 Within a day, industry clamoring to exploit landscape

Contacts:
Grant Stevens, Communications Director, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA); (319) 427-0260; grant@suwa.org
Keri Gilliland, The Wilderness Society, (KGilliland@tws.org)
Chaitna Sinha, Conservation Codirector and Staff Attorney, Grand Canyon Trust; (970) 399-9565 (csinha@grandcanyontrust.org)
Amy Dominguez, Sierra Club, amy.dominguez@sierraclub.org, (385) 355-4631
Kris Deutschman, Conservation Lands Foundation, kris@conservationlands.org, (505) 498-0212
Andrew Scibetta, NRDC, (202) 289-2421, ascibetta@nrdc.org
Daniel Hernandez, National Parks Conservation Association, dhernandez@npca.org, (202) 573-2201

SAN JUAN COUNTY, UT – 16 new mining claims (see map) have been filed in previously protected land in Bears Ears National Monument. These lands became subject to mining claims on Friday, September 11 – 60 days after President Trump decimated Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante by shrinking these national monuments by over 90%. All 16 claims were recorded on September 11 by noon; it took until Tuesday, September 15 for them to appear in the San Juan County Recorder’s Office’s online system.

The new mining claims (see map) are in two general areas: Lockhart Basin & near the Easy Peasy Mine (the mine has been re-buried). Three Claims were filed by George W. Schultz in the Lockhart Basin area. 13 claims were filed by Kimmerle Mining; two of these claims are adjustments to the Easy Peasy claims first filed after Trump’s 2017 reduction of Bears Ears and 11 are new claims nearby. Kyle Kimmerle (a Managing Member of Kimmerle Mining) was also a plaintiff in one of the cases filed challenging President Biden’s 2021 restoration of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. On July 14, 2026, Kimmerle Mining illegally attempted to file seven mining claims prior to the Sept. 11 deadline. Additional information appears below, along with quotes from Tribal leaders and conservation groups. 

“This rush to locate new mining claims in Bears Ears National Monument reinforces the need to be vigilant over the next several years while we work to undo Trump’s illegal actions and restore both Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments.“said Hanna Larsen, Staff Attorney at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). “As evidenced by the Easy Peasy Mine, claims like these often lead to real and long-lasting damage to the very qualities that make these monuments so special.”

“Immediately after the mining ban was lifted, 16 claims were filed on the lands removed from Bears Ears National Monument,” said Charlie Luke, Utah state director at The Wilderness Society. “This is not a hypothetical threat, it’s the reality of what happens when national monument protections are gutted. We cannot allow special interests to turn a profit on Bears Ears at the expense of future generations.” 

“The speed with which the mining industry moved to stake claims following the dismantling of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments demonstrates the real-world consequences of stripping protections from some of America’s most important landscapes,” said Bobby McEnaney, Senior Lands Analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “This sequence of events underscores exactly why Bears Ears was originally established and why this landscape deserves lasting protection. These mining claims amount to a virtual giveaway of public lands.”

“The administration put some of America’s greatest heritage at risk when it opened up Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante for mining,” said Chaitna Sinha, Staff Attorney and Conservation Codirector for the Grand Canyon Trust. “The 16 new mining claims in Bears Ears follow a poll in which the vast majority of Utahns said protections should be restored to all of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, including 52% of Republicans. 82% of those polled said that Native American tribes should have a strong role in managing lands they hold sacred. It’s a shame our elected officials aren’t listening to the people who elected them. Most Utah voters want these monuments restored to their original boundaries and want tribes to be partners in their management.” 

“Within days of the illegal reduction of these treasured public lands, industry interests are already lining up to exploit them,” said Franque Bains, Chapter Director of the Sierra Club in Utah. “This rush makes clear the consequences of the Trump administration illegally stripping protections from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante: Irreplaceable cultural landscapes and public lands are being put at risk for corporate profit. We will continue working alongside Tribal nations, local communities, and our partners to defend these landscapes and restore the protections they deserve.” 

“Sixteen new mining claims within days of the deadline is proof that this was never about public access — it’s about clearing the way for extraction,” said Chris Hill, CEO of the Conservation Lands Foundation. “BLM Director Pearce and Governor Cox like to talk about keeping lands open for the public, but when mining companies raced to stake claims on sacred and treasured landscapes, they gave them the green light. This tells you who they’re really working for. A recent Grand Canyon Trust poll found that 52% of Utah Republicans want protections restored to all of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, and 82% say tribes should have a strong role in managing the lands they hold sacred. Utahns have made themselves clear — it’s their leaders who refuse to listen. We’re going to keep fighting, in court and in communities, until these monuments and the integrity of the entire public lands system are restored.”

“The arguments about access in Bears Ears were clearly about energy extraction, and mining companies have wasted no time staking new claims,” said Sara Cawley, Energy Director at the National Parks Conservation Association. “Three of the claims are located in the Lockhart Basin, a spectacular landscape that contains numerous cultural and archaeological sites and sits next to Canyonlands National Park’s eastern boundary. National park units and their surrounding landscapes are no place for energy development, but outdated laws elevate mining above all other uses on these lands. We will continue to fight to prevent these special places, surrounding communities, and sovereign tribes from being undermined and exploited.”

Background Information on other Mining claims: 

Under President Trump’s proclamations decimating Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante by over 90%, mining claims could not be staked until 60 days after the date of the proclamation: Friday, Sept. 11, 2026. Despite this, on July 14, 2026, Kimmerle Mining filed 7 mining claims (see map) with the San Juan County (Utah) Recorder’s Office. Kimmerle Mining previously filed mining claims after Trump’s 2017 reduction of Bears Ears and excavated a partially reclaimed mine shaft on one of the claims – the so-called Easy Peasy claim (this mine has been re-buried); Kyle Kimmerle (a Managing Member of Kimmerle Mining) was also a plaintiff in one of the cases filed in the District of Utah challenging President Biden’s 2021 restoration of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.  

Two mining claims were also filed in Grand Staircase-Escalante, less than one month after Trump’s attack. On August 6, 2026, Craig Rosequist filed two mining claims (see map) with the Kane County (Utah) Recorder’s Office in areas cut out of the monument by the Trump proclamations. According to public records, Rosequist previously located several mining claims in neighboring Washington County, Utah. The Bureau of Land Management should reject claims filed in both national monuments prior to Sept. 11. 

• Map of 2026 claims in Bear Ears, showing the 2021 and 2026 Monument Boundaries and noting the location of the Easy Peasy Mine, created by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA)
• Map of 2026 Claims in Grand Staircase-Escalante, created by SUWA
• Photo and video assets of Kimmerle’s Easy Peasy Mine and surrounding claims, please credit Tim Peterson. 
  • Gallery & Gdrive 
  • Video b-roll

Background information about the national monument reductions:

• Statements from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal coalitions
• SUWA Statement on Trump’s Illegal Reductions of Grand Staircase-Escalante & Bears Ears National Monuments
• Full Statement and Quotes Tracking
• Maps of the reductions
• Reporter Background Memo on National Monuments

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The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is a nonprofit organization with members and supporters from around the country dedicated to protecting America’s redrock wilderness. From offices in Moab, Salt Lake City, and Washington, DC, our team of professionals defends the redrock, organizes support for America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, and stewards a world-renowned landscape. Learn more at www.suwa.org.

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