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On a clear, sunny day in May, just a few weeks into the Smoky Mountain rafting season, Heather Ellis took a dozen people through the Pigeon River Gorge to celebrate its grand reopening. She led them over and through roaring rapids with a practiced ease. “Forward!” she called. When the water rose, everyone heaved on their oar, ducking against the spray. The rubber float surged forward. “And relax.” 

Ellis, bubbly and blonde and smiling behind an enormous pair of shades, is overjoyed to be back on the water after an uncertain winter. It has been nine months since Hurricane Helene ravaged central Appalachia, crumbling highways and roads, leveling forests, and reshaping rivers.

The Pigeon runs through Western North Carolina into the eastern end of Tennessee, roughly parallel to Interstate 40. When the river flooded after Helene, it took huge bites out of the highway, closing it for months and isolating small communities. Debris tumbled into the river, and the crews scrambling to make repairs have replaced sections of riverbank with concrete. Their efforts have been complicated by ongoing flooding and mudslide, creating new scars alongside the old.  

 “The whole thing basically changed,” Ellis said. “It moved major boulders and mountains.”

Ellis possesses an infectiously sunny outlook, even though things have been hard. She lost her home and most of her belongings to Helene and lives in a camper parked in the lot at work. She shares her uncertainty with many thousands of people, especially those who are paid to lead visitors into the beautiful places that make the Great Smoky Mountains so popular. 

Despite setbacks, commercial rafting on the Pigeon is open this year. The reopening has had to contend with construction on a major highway, as well as some repeated flooding and mudslides. Gerard Albert III / Blue Ridge Public Radio

As many as 149,000 people in North Carolina alone draw a paycheck related in some way to outdoor recreation, and by one count the seven rivers of the southern Blue Ridge help sustain 68,000 jobs. The Pigeon River provides about $6 million in revenue annually to the rural counties along its banks, and some seven million people visit the French Broad, which flows through Asheville, each year. Rafting is second only to property taxes in the amount of money it brings to Cocke County, Tennessee.

Helene’s disruption of the rafting industry underscores how climate change — and the extreme weather it brings — threatens tourism-dependent economies. A dozen outfitters on the Pigeon, French Broad, and other rivers shut down after the storm and haven’t reopened. Many guides moved on. Those who remain grapple with what Helene wrought, trying to work during a season that, while active, remains well short of its usual vigor.

Those crammed into Ellis’ boat shouted joyfully over the din of roaring rapids, and when the water calmed, guides playfully pushed each other in. Yet everyone was keenly aware of what’s been lost. The patterns of the most popular rapids have shifted. Some vanished, others grew bigger and wilder. In some ways, the Pigeon is a different river. “Stuff will come back eventually but, you know … it’ll probably be a bit,” Ellis said as the boat approached a construction zone.

Tourists have so far been okay with the views of construction, according to raft guides. The river is still runnable, and the construction provides interesting fodder for conversation about Helene recovery. Gerard Albert III / Blue Ridge Public Radio

The bustling work on shore highlighted the dissonance of life on the Pigeon. To the left, the riverbank met a dense and dark mountain forest. To the right, it rose sharply into concrete and gravel shoring up the storm-damaged highway. The sound of singing birds and running water mingled with the rumble of heavy equipment and traffic on Interstate 40. As Ellis’s raft passed the site, she waved. A man in a bulldozer honked a friendly response.

Hurricane Helene made a mess of the Pigeon. Much of the debris the storm knocked loose and the flood carried away choked the waterway, which meanders 70 miles through Pisgah National Forest and drains a watershed of some 700 square miles. Downed trees, vast tangles of brush, even the remains of buildings that once stood along its banks clogged it for months. Although an intrepid rafter or kayaker could run its full length, some of the most popular spots for putting in remain inaccessible.

Hurricane Helene caused debris, like this pile seen on October 4, 2024, in Canton, North Carolina,
to build up along the Pigeon River. While many parts of the river have since recovered, other sections remain inaccessible. MeliSue Gerrits / Getty Images

Other rivers that course through the Smokies saw similar devastation, and uneven recoveries. Some are running clear and strong enough to host rafters, others lag behind. “It’s a story of haves and have nots,” said Kevin Colburn, National Stewardship Director of American Whitewater and a river enthusiast himself.

The Pigeon is among those that are open for business but marred by quarrying, riverbank stabilization, and construction. Others, like the French Broad, are ready to ride but businesses along their shores have been washed out. The Nolichucky, which runs 115 miles through North Carolina into Tennessee, is, to Colburn’s mind, the most tragic. Rafting season is on hold as CSX Transportation rebuilds its rail line through the gorge. A lot of people aren’t happy about that. Guides have watched, aghast, as the company dug rock from the riverbed to shore up the tracks. “‘The river will be there,’ is what people say,” Colburn said. “What the storm taught us is that’s not always true.”

When the flood swept dozens of businesses away, many guides were left without a reason to return. Others have been hindered by the lugubrious pace of recovery and reconstruction. With nothing else to do, Trey Moore, a kayak instructor and guide in Erwin, Tennessee, turned to activism to get the Nolichucky open again. The river has long kept towns like his alive even as other industries moved on by attracting a steady stream of people who fall in love with the area and settle there to raise families. “We’re a small, tight-knit community,” he said of those who work the rivers.

Heather Ellis rafts down a section of the Pigeon River with two of her friends and fellow guides. Some parts of the river are running clear and strong enough to host rafters, while others areas are still recovering almost a year after Hurricane Helene Gerard Albert III / Blue Ridge Public Radio

Moore, a guide for more than 20 years, said many feel a responsibility to their neighbors. During and after the storm, many used their swiftwater rescue skills, and knowledge of the rivers’ contours, to pull people from raging waters. Some hiked for miles up broken roads bringing supplies to isolated elders. Others administered first aid and guided helicopters and first responders to those needing help. They saved lives.

That overwhelming feeling of purpose has since given way to worry. Guiding people down a river is by most accounts incredibly fun for people who love it, but it can also be an unstable way to earn a living. It’s a dangerous seasonal gig, it doesn’t pay all that well, and it rarely comes with benefits. Many who do it live in communal housing or mobile homes. So when the jobs vanished, a lot of them left. “We’ve lost so many guides to so many other rivers,” Moore said. “The guides that are sticking around are struggling.”

Moore is outraged by how CSX is handling reconstruction of the railroad and feels agencies like the U.S. Forest Service have backburnered people like him. As someone who loves the river, and as chairman of the Nolichucky River Outdoor Association, he feels a responsibility to help restore the paddling community to glory. In the meantime, a lot of guides are working on debris removal crews clearing the rivers and surrounding areas. Leslie Beninato is among them. She worked as a guide and owned a small boat rental business before Helene. “Both places do not exist anymore,” she said. “It was just, ‘Oh God, what am I going to do now?’” 

These days she leads crews picking trash off the banks of the French Broad. The only requirement is that anyone joining her must have lost their job to Helene. Most worked in rafting or other river-related industries. Some of them have cleared away remnants of their own workplaces.

Beninato is in her late thirties, and has lived in the mountains of western North Carolina since graduating from Appalachian State University 20 years ago. Unlike some of the younger, greener guides, she’s settled enough to feel stubborn about staying. “To look at the positives of it, how our community came together, that’s one of the reasons why I love the Appalachian mountains,” she said. “I’ve chosen to make these mountains my home because they mean so much to me and they really captured my heart.”

Leslie Beninato leads a debris cleanup crew with MountainTrue along the French Broad River. She is hoping the region’s debris pickup crews can be a continued source of employment for outdoor recreation workers facing economic instability. Katie Myers / Grist / Blue Ridge Public Radio

She spoke while paddling across the river, wearing gloves, waders, and a sun hat. Her small canoe carried a pile of trash bags and some trash grabbers; the sun was hot, and mounds of silt covered the tangled riverbanks where trees and businesses once stood. “Just a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear, but then everyone else was in that same boat,” she said, jumping out of hers into waist-deep water. 

A few months after the storm, she started exploring the river and grabbing trash, keeping Excel spreadsheets detailing what she found and where, and what more needed to be removed. That work turned into the crew, and the possibility of something more permanent as destructive storms continue to wreak havoc on the mountains. Things are OK for now, she said, yanking a few pieces of twisted metal out of the brush. Besides, she’s used to improvising. All guides are. “That’s what you have to do in outdoor scenarios,” she said. “You have to think, ‘All right, well here’s plan A, how we think and we want things to go. Here’s plan B, if it doesn’t really go this way, then, oh crap, here’s plan C, if plan A and B just got thrown out the window.’”

Earlier this month, just as rafting season was getting in swing, the Pigeon’s wounds reopened. Four inches of rain doused western North Carolina, causing a rockslide on Interstate 40 and washing construction equipment into the river. All but the lowest reaches of the waterway is closed to rafting, and several put-in spots washed out.

Even before the water started to recede, raft guides once again piled into their boats to rescue neighbors, then set to work mucking out damaged houses and businesses. It was another blow to an industry, and a community, that is, in the words of one young guide, “getting some PTSD from the flood in September.”

As best as Heather Ellis can tell, no more than half the rafting companies in the Cocke County area have managed to reopen since Helene,, and some may not come back at all. She feels like one of the lucky ones, even if she is living in a camper until her new home is built.

Heather Ellis lives in an RV near her company while her home gets rebuilt. She says while it’s been hard, storm recovery has helped her get to know her neighbors better. Gerard Albert III / Blue Ridge Public Radio

After that May day on the Pigeon, she and two guide friends relaxed in front of her RV, watching the next group of lifejacket-clad tourists prepare to set out. Ellis started working here eight years ago, when she was 20, long enough that it started feeling like home. She recalled the moment her boyfriend called her to say Helene had taken their house. “It was heartbreaking,” she said.

In the months since, Ellis has found solace in growing more connected to the community, helping people rebuild, and getting to know the Pigeon River in its new form — exciting and frightening in equal measure. For Ellis and other guides, the only constant is the way these rivers change. 

“It kind of made me feel like a rookie again, cause I had to read water,” Ellis said. “That’s what we say when we’re just kind of seeing where the path needs to be, how we’re going to navigate down the river.”

Gerard Albert III contributed reporting to this story.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A year after Helene, river guides in Appalachia are navigating a new world on Jun 27, 2025.

When wildfires devastated a wide swath of Los Angeles last winter, officials warned residents of several ZIP codes not to drink the water, or boil it first if they must. They worried that soot, ash, and other debris from the blazes might have infiltrated the groundwater, or that damaged pipes might allow toxins into the supply. The last of these “do not drink” orders was lifted last month.

But the first large-scale study of post-wildfire water quality has found that pollution created by such a blaze can threaten water supplies for eight years — far longer than previous studies indicated. Researchers at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, or CIRES, at the University of Colorado Boulder analyzed 100,000 samples from 500 watersheds across the western United States. They found “contaminants like organic carbon, phosphorus, nitrogen, and sediment” throughout those that had burned. At their peak, those pollutants can be found at levels up to 103 times higher than before the fire. There also can be 9 to 286 times as much sediment in water after a fire. 

The findings have great implications for water systems as they prepare for a world in which fires like those that burned in Los Angeles and, more recently, North Carolina and a great swath of Canada, grow more common. One in six people in the United States lives in a wildfire risk zone, and forested watersheds provide water to almost two-thirds of municipalities in the U.S., making water systems everywhere vulnerable. 

“I’ve had a lot of conversations with different utilities and water managers in the West, and every single one of them are concerned about wildfire impacts,” said Carli Brucker, lead author of the study, published Tuesday. But, she added, what they don’t have is longer-term data. “I’m hoping that this research provides these concrete numbers that can really back up water managers’ concerns, and turn those concerns into real funding that they can start putting towards climate resilience. Strong evidence can be really helpful in securing funding.”

Water utilities in the LA area addressed the threat posed by the fires that burned in January in the short term by flushing water mains and pipes. Officials with the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power said they are conducting ongoing water testing in the Palisades area, and are offering free water quality testing to any resident that wants it.

“These urban fires are creating these unprecedented challenges that treatment plants can’t really deal with,” Brucker said. “Burning buildings and businesses and roads and cars, it creates all these contaminants that are just way more dangerous and way more difficult to deal with.”

Across the locations the researchers analyzed, contamination levels varied widely. In general, post-fire pollution was worse in heavily forested or heavily urbanized areas. The “most dramatic spikes” in pollutants like phosphorus, nitrate, organic carbon and sediment generally occurred in the first few years after a fire, according to researcher Ben Livneh. 

“We found the impacts to be really persistent,” Livneh wrote in The Conversation. “We saw significantly elevated levels of nitrogen and sediment for up to eight years following a fire.” Even years after a fire, a major rainfall can trigger a mudslide, unearthing contaminants. Beyond polluting groundwater, that can cause unexpected environmental issues. “Nitrogen and phosphorus act like fertilizer for algae. A surge of these nutrients can trigger algal blooms in reservoirs, which can produce toxins and create foul odors,” Livneh said. 

There are several ways to fight these threats to water supply.

“The first line of defense is just diversifying water sources,” Brucker said. Ideally, a utility would draw from several watersheds, so it has a backup in the event one of them is impacted by a fire, she said. They also can build additional sedimentation basins to increase their capacity for sediment handling. 

“But all of these things cost a lot more,” Brucker said. And it’s difficult to convince strained utilities in Western states – already dealing with things like water shortages – to spend money on wildfire mitigation without numbers. Rural communities, in particular, often rely on single-source water systems and limited funding, which makes responding to emergencies much more challenging. 

“Utilities don’t usually have these sorts of process improvements in place, unless they have a good reason,” she said. “I’m hoping this research can point to – this is a pretty good reason to start planning for and trying to budget for those resilience improvements.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Pollution from wildfires can contaminate our water for up to 8 years, study finds on Jun 27, 2025.

Atlantic Strategic Minerals (ASM), an emerging critical minerals producer majority owned by Appian Capital Advisory, announced Thursday that its mining and mineral processing operations in Virginia have started commercial operations.

ASM’s Virginia project comprises high-grade mining assets and processing facilities, including a concentrator plant and the largest mineral separation plant in North America. Past and current investments into the project and its related facilities are estimated at more than $200 million, including initial construction and refurbishment.

With the commercial production milestone, the Virginia operations become the 12th mining project that Appian has brought into production since 2016.

ASM said its opening of its Virginia mining and processing facilities marks a significant milestone for US economic security with the production of critical minerals ilmenite, which is a feedstock for titanium and pigment industries, and zircon, essential resources for industries ranging from consumer goods to advanced manufacturing and defense.

Titanium and zirconium have been designated by the US government as critical minerals with domestic industries currently heavily relying on international imports to meet demand.

ASM said the operation offers capacity to process domestic and imported critical minerals – building more secure US supply chains.

The company added that it has already delivered its first shipments of ilmenite and zircon, as part of long-term offtake agreements, to US industrial customers.

In the next phase of development at its Virginia operations, ASM plans to produce monazite, a key mineral feedstock used in the production of rare earth oxides. Studies indicate that ASM’s monazite has significant concentrations of praseodymium (Pr) and neodymium (Nd), key materials for magnets used in electric vehicles (EVs), wind turbines and defense applications.

With China currently processing approximately 90% of rare earths, the company said the project’s monazite production has the potential to significantly diversify and strengthen the US critical supply chains.

“We are proud to officially commence production in Virginia, a project that not only strengthens the domestic supply of critical minerals but also plays a vital role in bolstering US economic and national security,” ASM CEO Chris Wyatt said in a news release.

“It is a case study of how to responsibly and successfully bring a strategically important project into production, while also ensuring lasting benefits to local communities.”

Kodiak Copper (TSXV: KDK) released its first resource figures for the MPD copper-gold project in southern British Columbia.

The new estimate, released late Wednesday, covers four of seven zones – Gate, Ketchan Man and Dillard. These deposits underpin 56.4 million tonnes indicated at 0.31% copper, 0.14 gram gold and 1.18 grams silver per tonne for a copper-equivalent grade of 0.42%. That accounts for 385 million lb. of contained copper, 250,000 oz. gold and 2.14 million oz. silver, or 522 million lb. of copper-equivalent.

Kodiak estimates MPD’s inferred resources at 240.7 million tonnes grading 0.24% copper, 0.12 gram gold and 0.91 gram silver, or 0.33% copper-equivalent. This would represent 1.3 million lb. copper, 960,000 oz. gold and 7.05 million oz. silver for 1.75 million lb. of copper-equivalent metals, the company said.

“I’ve had the vision right from the start that MPD’s rich mineral endowment holds the potential for a major mine in BC and our initial resource estimate clearly demonstrates this,” Kodiak chairman Chris Taylor said in a news release. “We expect to grow this resource substantially with the inclusion of the remaining zones later this year.”

Kodiak shares gained about 4.6% to C$0.68 apiece Thursday in Toronto, boosting the stock’s 12-month gain to 55%.

Peer valuation

Management presented the numbers as proof-point one that MPD deserves to be compared with established BC porphyries. It also offers clear ways to take the asset to a feasibility case. These include cut-off flexibility, zone expansion and step-out drilling.

Analysts predict a copper supply shortage by 2027. This is due to limited project pipelines and growing demand from electrification and renewables. Projects of MPD’s size will enter a tight market, positioning Kodiak to capture premium valuations once it converts resources to reserves and advances to economic studies.

With a C$58 million ($52.5 million) market capitalization as of Thursday, Kodiak sits well below peers with similar resources. Before Newmont (TSX: NGT; NYSE: NEM) acquired the preliminary economic assessment-stage Tatogga gold-copper project in 2021 for about C$400 million, GT Gold had a market cap of roughly C$304 million. Goldshore Resources (TSXV: GSHR), which is developing the resource-stage Moss Lake gold project in Ontario and has a market cap of C$174 million, is another peer.

MPD’s emerging scale could potentially help Kodiak close that valuation gap.

Resource flexibility

According to Kodiak, even a modest cut-off reduction to 0.12% copper-equivalent would lift indicated tonnage to 82.4 million tonnes and in-situ copper-equivalent to 600 million lb., with inferred tonnage up to 435.6 million tonnes for 2.4 billion lb. copper-equivalent. That sensitivity underlines how incremental drilling can unlock metal with little extra effort, the company said.

Confirmation and infill drilling is underway at the West, Adit and South zones as part of the current exploration program. Results are expected later this year for inclusion in the full resource estimate before year-end, the company said.

“I consider this initial resource estimate a starting point for future growth, as most of our zones remain open to extension and our work to date has identified more than 20 additional copper and gold occurrences and targets,” Taylor said.

On June 27th, the people of Winnipeg will be welcome to cross the street at Portage & Main!If you’re from outside Winnipeg, your response to the above statement might be: ...

The post OPENING DAY! first appeared on Green Action Centre.

Donald project in Victoria, Australia. Credit: Energy Fuels

Energy Fuels (NYSE-A: UUUU; TSX: EFR) has received final regulatory clearance to develop the Donald rare earth elements (REE) and mineral sand project in the Wimmera region of Victoria, southeast Australia.

In a press release dated June 25, the Colorado-based uranium-critical minerals developer confirmed that the government of Victoria has approved its work plan for the project’s construction and operation.

“The work plan approval for the Donald project is significant as it moves us one step closer to creating an important link between the United States and Australia on rare earths and critical minerals,” Energy Fuels CEO Mark Chalmers said.

Donald is part of a joint venture with Australia-based mineral sands miner Astron Corp., under which Energy Fuels has the right to earn a 49% interest in the project by investing a total of A$183 million ($119 million) and issuing $17.5 million worth of shares.

The work plan approval now clears the way for the JV partners to make a final investment decision, which, according to Energy Fuels, could be made as early as 2025.

Shares of Energy Fuels rose 5.1% by 1:20 p.m. in Toronto for a market capitalization of C$1.7 billion ($1.2 billion).

Near-term REE source

Energy Fuels regards the Donald project to be one of the world’s “best near-term sources” of rare earth minerals, which it plans to process into “light”, “mid” and “heavy” rare earth oxides at its White Mesa mill in Utah in the US.

The Donald orebody is estimated to hold 37 million tonnes of heavy minerals, including approximately 724,000 tonnes of rare earths. The deposit has an estimated mine life of 58 years.

White Mesa, one of the largest REE processing facilities outside China, achieved commercial production a year ago, beginning with “on-spec” neodymium-praseodymium — a light rare earth used in magnets. Currently in its first phase, the facility has the capacity to produce 850 to 1,000 tonnes of NdPr per year.

The Energy Fuels team is also piloting the production of heavy rare earths dysprosium and terbium.

2026 production

According to Energy Fuels, the Donald project would feed the White Mesa mill with approximately 7,000 to 8,000 tonnes of rare earth concentrates per year in its initial phase, commencing as early as 2026.

By company estimates, 8,000 tonnes of concentrates from the Donald project would contain approximately 4,700 tonnes of total rare earth oxides, including roughly 990 tonnes of separated NdPr, 84 tonnes of Dy oxide, and 14 tonnes of Tb oxide.

Energy Fuels said the White Mesa mill is expected to process the Donald feed into separated NdPr, along with a samarium-plus concentrate that would be stockpiled at the mill for future processing into separated mid and heavy REE oxides.

Once the Donald project begins Phase 1 commercial production, the JV partners are expected to evaluate a Phase 2 expansion, which would be expected to increase its REE concentrate production to approximately 13,000 to 14,000 tonnes annually.

Energy Fuels also said it is contemplating a Phase 2 expansion of the White Mesa mill that would increase its processing capacity to 60,000 tonnes, outputting roughly 6,000 tonnes of separated NdPr, along with significant quantities of Tb, Dy and potentially Sm and other REE oxides.

The increased production at Donald, it said, would provide the White Mesa mill with “a consistent and significant source of REE feedstock” for decades to come.

Utah Senator Mike Lee released a new version of his unpopular plan to sell off public land across the West after his first attempt received vehement pushback from the public and was flagged for violating Senate rules.

The new plan does not include U.S. Forest Service land, but it still requires the Bureau of Land Management to sell up to 1.2 million acres of national public land. This is limited to land within 5 miles of “population centers”—a vague, undefined term that could apply to lands near virtually any community.

Despite narrowing the scope of his proposal, Lee will likely continue to receive strong backlash from the public. According to the 2025 Conservation in the West Poll, 82 percent of Westerners prefer building more housing within or close to existing communities over selling off public lands to develop housing.

Lawmakers are quietly trying to hand over millions of acres of public land to oil and gas companies In a new blog post, Center for Western Priorities Communications Manager Kate Groetzinger describes how Lee’s proposed public lands sales aren’t the only attack on public lands nestled in the budget reconciliation bill. Quietly making their way through Congress are provisions to sell out millions of acres of our public lands to oil and gas companies for a fraction of the current cost, allowing them to lock up millions of acres in drilling leases and putting even more money into the pockets of corporations and billionaires.

Quick hits Lee’s revised plan would sell up to 1.2M acres of public lands

The Hill | Utah News Dispatch

National parks scramble to fill top leadership positions, but fix could create more vacancies

Government Executive

Colorado oil and gas official picked for top BLM post

E&E News

Lawmakers are quietly trying to hand over millions of acres of public land to oil and gas companies

Westwise

Public land advocates: Mike Lee’s new land sale plan is ‘just a different pile of dog sh*t’

Outdoor Life

A plan to sell public land near this Colorado town looks dead. Here’s why

New York Times

As Wyoming protests, public land sell-off ‘just getting started’

WyoFile

Opinion: We’re not willing to give up a single acre of public land, Senator Lee

RideApart

Quote of the day

It’s still a pile of dog sh*t, it’s just a different pile of dog sh*t. He just doesn’t get it.”

—Randy Newberg, TV personality and Montana-based hunter, on Senator Mike Lee’s revised public lands sell-off, Outdoor Life

Picture This @usinterior

“You look great, not a day over 4,000.”

Bristlecone pines are among the oldest living organisms on Earth. Shaped by wind, snow, and time, they’ve endured ice ages, volcanic eruptions, and the rise and fall of empires. Their secret to longevity is thriving in harsh, high-altitude environments.

You can find these ancient survivors at places like @greatbasinnp in Nevada and the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, managed by @u.s.forestservice, in California.

Photos by Ross Stone and Thomas Sikora

 

(Featured image: A biker on Lunch Loops Trail within 5 miles of Grand Junction, Colorado. BLM Colorado, Flickr)

The post Lee releases a new plan to sell off public land. It’s still bad appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Platinum soared to its highest level since 2014 on Thursday, fueled by supply concerns and a wave of speculative buying.

By midday, the precious metal had gained nearly 5% to trade at $1,406 an ounce, after hitting a fresh 11-year high of $1,416 earlier. Palladium also jumped by 4.8% to about $1,111 an ounce.

Earlier this month, platinum surged past the $1,200-an-ounce mark for the first time in four years amid signs of growing market tightness.

“The recent surge in Chinese investment and jewelry replacement is shining a spotlight on platinum’s supply deficit,” Justin Lin, an analyst at Global X ETFs, told Bloomberg.

Commenting on palladium’s rally, Lin said the metals are “intrinsically linked” as they can be substituted for one another for use in autocatalysts depending on relative prices, so “we can expect some positive momentum in palladium off of platinum’s rally.”

According to Bloomberg, the dominant platinum spot market in London and Zurich has shown signs of tightness for months, after approximately half a million ounces surged into US warehouses due to tariff concerns.

Forward prices for platinum are now trading well below spot, a situation known as backwardation, which indicates tight market conditions.

The implied cost of borrowing the metal is also still high, at an annualized rate of roughly 13% for a one-month lease, well above the usual rate of close to zero, Bloomberg reported.

(With files from Bloomberg)

Mali plans to restart operations at Barrick Mining’s (TSX: ABX; NYSE: B) Loulo‑Gounkoto gold complex under a court-appointed temporary administrator after seizing control earlier this month, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.

The move follows a Malian court decision to suspend Barrick’s management of Loulo‑Gounkoto, one of the Canadian miner’s most important assets, amid an escalating dispute over new mining code and unpaid taxes.

On June 16, Mali’s Tribunal de Commerce ordered that the Loulo‑Gounkoto complex be placed under provisional state control for six months. It also appointed former health minister Soumana Makadji as administrator.

Barrick had suspended operations in mid‑January after authorities blocked gold exports, detained staff and seized three tonnes of bullion.

On Monday, Malian tax authorities reopened Barrick’s Bamako office under Makadji’s oversight.

“The situation cannot remain as it is, because we need to protect the workers, we need to protect the factories,” Mines Minister Amadou Keita said on state-owned broadcaster ORTM.

The administrator will “restart operations, produce, pay the workers’ wages, but also produce gold for the national economy,” he said.

Dispute drags on

Negotiations have been ongoing since Mali implemented a new mining code in 2023, raising royalties and increasing state participation in mines. Barrick disputes these terms, claiming existing agreements protect its rights, and has initiated arbitration through the World Bank’s ICSID.

The company also removed the Loulo‑Gounkoto complex from its 2025 production guidance after halting output in January; the asset represented about 14% of its anticipated gold output and was expected to produce around 250,000 oz. Permits are due for renewal by February 2026.

Loulo‑Gounkoto is Barrick’s largest operation in Mali, accounting for over 720,000 oz. of gold in 2024.

News this week that the world’s second-biggest lithium miner – SQM –  has begun laying off 5% of its Chilean workforce would not come as a surprise to those following the market for the battery raw material.

Battery lithium prices have been decimated since reaching a peak less than three years ago with prices slumping to $8,450 a tonne in June from above $80,000 in November 2022. 

A wait and see approach on production cuts by lithium miners, particularly in China where government support keeps loss-making mines on life support, and slower than expected demand growth from the electric vehicle industry provides little prospect for a return to the boom years.

The value of terminal lithium tonnes deployed in EVs, including plug-in and conventional hybrids, sold around the world from January through May totalled $2.15 billion. 

The extent of the slump is illustrated by the monthly EV battery nickel tally, which is now higher than that of lithium, despite the significant move towards nickel-free batteries such as lithium iron phosphate chemistries and a cooling of nickel prices at the same time. 

The value of the lithium contained in the batteries of EVs sold in December 2022 alone reached $3.2 billion despite the fact that global unit sales were a fraction of what they are now and shipments skewed towards hybrids, which have inherently smaller batteries and therefore less contained metal than full electric cars. 

On a per EV basis the economics of lithium carbonate and hydroxide look even worse. From a peak of more than $1,900 per sales weighted average EV in December 2022, the installed lithium so far this year only averages just above $200 per vehicle. 

For a fuller analysis of the battery metals market check out the latest issue of the Northern Miner print and digital editions.

* Frik Els is Editor at Large for MINING.COM and Head of Adamas Inside, providing news and analysis based on Adamas Intelligence data.


English subtitles available

The Biodiversity Festival, held on June 1st at the Articulturae farmers’ market in Manziana (Rome), marked another significant milestone in the journey of Terrae Vivae. This initiative aims to nurture ecological communities centered on local, wholesome food, biodiversity and environmental protection, regenerative agriculture, and the well-being of both humans and animals.

The Festival also served as the occasion to launch the short film “Biodiversity is Life“, which documents a deep and participatory learning process on biodiversity, agroecology, and earth care. Though rooted in a specific territory, this process aspires—through its holistic dimension—to establish a replicable model in other regions, countries, and continents.

Across the world, a movement is underway to reclaim control over our food and distribution systems. Local economies are being overtaken by globalization, while biodiversity is systematically eroded in favor of monocultures and industrial livestock systems that scar landscapes, pollute soil and water, and produce food lacking in nutrients and contaminated with pesticides and herbicides. The impact of this system on the environment and society is both profound and destructive.

Una rete internazionale per rispondere alle sfide delle multinazionali e delle economie globalizzate

E’ proprio per rispondere alle molteplici sfide che il modello produttivo industriale globalizzato lancia ai territori di tutto il mondo, che Navdanya International ha avviato Terrae Vivae, un programma che intende coinvolgere attivamente cittadini e produttori locali nella scelta dei processi produttivi e di distribuzione. La produzione di cibo di qualità diviene, in se stessa, un atto di condivisione e di socialità. Democratizzare i sistemi alimentari è un passo essenziale per invertire il processo totalitario e distruttivo messo in atto dalle lobby industriali.
Terrae Vivae mira a condividere l’esperienza di oltre trent’anni accumulata da Navdanya in termini di difesa dei diritti della natura e di tutela e valorizzazione del patrimonio di biodiversità e di conoscenze locali contro le sfide della globalizzazione e dei monopoli delle multinazionali.

Photo cr.:Erika Santoro

Da questo punto di vista, il programma si inserisce e agisce in armonia con tutti le istanze bottom up che negli ultimi decenni si sono sviluppate organicamente sui territori di tutto il mondo. Distretti ecologici del cibo, biodistretti, eco villaggi, consigli del cibo, gruppi di acquisto solidale, mercati contadini etc. Rispondere alle sfide dell’economia globale guidata dagli interessi della finanza, significa tornare a rilanciare i processi democratici, a rigenerare le comunità, a favorire le economie circolari, ridurre gli sprechi, riciclare i rifiuti, azzerare le emissioni climalteranti, rigenerare il suolo , purificare le falde acquifere, reclamare i beni comuni, far fronte alla crisi sanitaria, assicurare il benessere animale. Sono queste alcune delle battaglie più importanti intorno alle quali il tessuto sociale e culturale si può risanare attraverso processi democratici e inclusivi.

Terrae Vivae opera dunque come una rete vivente che promuove la transizione verso l’agroecologia intrecciando ricerca, istruzione, politica e azione dal basso per co-creare comunità rigenerative. L’agroecologia non è solo un insieme di tecniche agricole ma una trasformazione sistemica ad alta intensità di conoscenza, che rimodella le pratiche agricole e le strutture di governance verso la resilienza sociale ed ecologica. E’ dunque essenziale abbracciare un approccio relazionale e co-creativo in cui ricercatori, agricoltori, politici e comunità collaborano per sviluppare, testare e perfezionare le pratiche agroecologiche in contesti del mondo reale. Collegando la conoscenza scientifica con la saggezza tradizionale e locale, si garantisce che le transizioni agroecologiche siano sensibili al luogo, culturalmente radicate e adatte al clima.

Non si tratta, però, esclusivamente di ripristinare ciò che è stato degradato, ma di creare nuovi percorsi affinché le relazioni tra comunità, culture ed ecosistemi possano prosperare insieme. Le comunità rigenerative sono infatti ecosistemi dinamici e co-creativi in ​​cui tutti gli attori, umani e non solo, partecipano attivamente alla formazione reciproca e del proprio ambiente condiviso. La rigenerazione è vista come un processo attivo e relazionale in cui le comunità non sono semplicemente sostenute ma continuamente reimmaginate e rimodellate dalla reciproca influenza di tutti i partecipanti, umani e non-umani. È un impegno per una trasformazione a lungo termine, in cui coltivare, mangiare, apprendere e acquistare cibo locale vengono intesi come atti di cura, collaborazione e interesse.

Comunità in formazione

L’istruzione è un aspetto vitale della transizione agroecologica. Attraverso l’apprendimento esperienziale, basato sul territorio e sul luogo, è possibile promuovere una connessione con gli ecosistemi locali, i sistemi alimentari e le pratiche sostenibili, garantendo che l’istruzione non sia uno sforzo astratto e meramente cognitivo ma un’esperienza relazionale coinvolgente e pratica. Interagendo attivamente con la terra, i partecipanti acquisiscono un profondo rispetto per la complessità della natura e la resilienza dei sistemi agroecologici, riconoscendo il loro ruolo personale e collettivo nella gestione ambientale.

Il programma di educazione ecologica di Terrae Vivae è dunque molto più di un semplice percorso di apprendimento prevedendo la creazione di legami tra le persone, la terra, la comunità, le fattorie e gli ecosistemi complessi che ci sostengono. La partecipazione attiva dei membri della comunità rende questo processo un’esperienza condivisa e viva. Grazie a questo approccio inclusivo, chi partecipa riscopre il proprio legame con il territorio in modo autentico e significativo attraverso il metodo del “imparare facendo” che prevede uno scambio continuo di conoscenze tra generazioni. Così, i giovani diventano custodi di un sapere ecologico prezioso e protagonisti attivi del cambiamento nelle loro comunità, attraverso un rapporto diretto e concreto con la terra.

L’educazione ecologica è allora uno strumento imprescindibile per costruire futuri sostenibili, in cui il rispetto per la complessità e la resilienza della natura si traduce in pratiche quotidiane di cura e rigenerazione. Questi percorsi promuovono non solo la conoscenza, ma anche la capacità di agire come agenti di cambiamento, riconoscendo nei giovani non semplici destinatari, ma protagonisti attivi della trasformazione sociale ed ecologica. Non si tratta solo di acquisire informazioni, ma di coltivare un rispetto profondo per la complessità della natura e per la resilienza dei sistemi agroecologici e di riconoscere alle nuove generazioni il loro ruolo fondamentale di custodi dell’ambiente.

E’ allora essenziale ispirare e dotare la prossima generazione delle competenze, delle conoscenze e dell’alfabetizzazione ecologica necessarie per sostenere comunità resilienti eque, eque ed ecologicamente consapevoli per incoraggiare una transizione verso pratiche di vita sostenibili che privilegino la resilienza ambientale, la conoscenza locale e l’esperienza globale. Attraverso pratiche rigenerative, l’educazione ai principi dell’ecologia profonda e l’azione guidata dalla comunità, è possibile costruire comunità resilienti che siano consapevoli dal punto di vista ecologico e siano in grado di intraprendere azioni significative per il pianeta.

Celebrare la biodiversità per avviare processi rigenerativi

La Festa della Biodiversità celebra il lavoro collettivo con la comunità e rappresenta la sintesi concreta del nostro approccio pedagogico e politico. Questo evento, che si svolge solitamente al termine di ogni ciclo didattico, rafforza i legami tra produttori, studenti e famiglie, mettendo al centro i giovani e costruendo una rete di relazioni sempre più forte e vitale. Laboratori, scambi di semi, dialoghi intergenerazionali, momenti di riflessione collettiva e di gioco diventano strumenti concreti per esercitare la democrazia alimentare e per costruire sistemi alimentari più equi, resilienti e sostenibili.

 

E’ quanto si racconta nel cortometraggio “Biodiversity is Life“, presentato in occasione della Festa della Biodiversità. Il cortometraggio racconta l’esperienza dell’educazione ecologica attraverso un percorso di scoperta e apprendimento sui temi della biodiversità, dell’agroecologia e della cura della terra. Un percorso che inizia in India, presso l’Università della Terra di Navdanya che, da oltre vent’anni, accoglie piccoli agricoltori e studenti da tutto il mondo per trasmettere pensieri e pratiche dell’agroecologia. E’ proprio Vandana Shiva, presidente di Navdanya, a spiegare il legame fra la tutela della biodiversità e il nostro benessere fisico e spirituale. Attraverso immagini e testimonianze, il cortometraggio documenta le attività svolte sui territori: dall’osservazione diretta degli ecosistemi alle pratiche agricole sostenibili, dai laboratori didattici alle esperienze collettive, sottolineando il ruolo attivo delle nuove generazioni come custodi di un sapere ecologico che coniuga tradizione e innovazione. “Biodiversity is Life” restituisce il senso e l’impatto di un’esperienza che ha saputo andare oltre la semplice trasmissione di conoscenze, promuovendo una cultura della responsabilità condivisa e un legame autentico con il territorio.

La Festa della Biodiversità è, finalmente, un invito permanente a unirsi al movimento di trasformazione di Terrae Vivae, a diventare protagonisti del cambiamento e a difendere il diritto di tutte e tutti a un cibo sano, locale e prodotto nel rispetto della terra e delle persone. Coltivare consapevolezza ecologica significa coltivare la capacità di agire insieme per rigenerare i nostri territori, restituendo consapevolezza, dignità e resilienza alle comunità.

 

Growing up in Chicago, Chakena D. Perry knew not to trust the water coming out of her tap.

“It was just one of these unspoken truths within households like mine — low-income, Black households — that there was some sort of distrust with the water,” said Perry, who later learned that Chicago is the city with the most lead service lines in the country. “No one really talked about it, but we never used our tap for just regular drinking.”

Now, as a senior policy advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Perry is part of a coalition that fought for stricter rules to force cities like Chicago to remove their toxic lead pipes faster. Last year, advocates celebrated a big win: The Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency mandated that water systems across the country replace all their lead service lines. Under the new rule, most water systems will have 10 years to complete replacements, while Chicago will likely get just over 20, starting in 2027, when that requirement kicks in.

But the city’s replacement plan, submitted to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in April per state law and obtained through a public records request, puts it 30 years behind that timeline. 

Chicago’s plan adheres to state law and an outdated EPA rule from the first Trump administration. It aims to replace the city’s estimated 412,000 lead service lines by 2076 — completing 8,300 replacements annually for 50 years, starting in 2027.

The latest federal rule requires Chicago to replace nearly 20,000 pipes per year beginning in 2027 — more than double the speed of the city’s current plan. Documents show city officials are aware of the new requirements, but have not yet updated their plans. 

A delayed timeline will expose many more children and adults to the risk of toxic drinking water, and rising temperatures from climate change may exacerbate the risk by causing more lead to leach off pipes and into water. 

Coming soon: More reporting on Chicago’s lead service lines, plus an interactive map to explore which areas are most at risk. Sign up to be notified when these stories and tools are available.

For Perry, even 20 more years of lead pipes was a compromise.

“People are already being exposed — they’re being exposed daily,” Perry said. “There is no number [of years] that is satisfactory to me, but 20-ish years is better than 50.”

Chakena D. Perry speaks at a rally in 2022. Perry is now a senior policy advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council and has advocated for faster replacement of lead service lines in cities like Chicago. Pat Nabong / Sun-Times

In recent decades, drinking water crises in Washington, D.C., and Flint, Michigan, put the public health threat of lead on the national map. Lead pipes are a danger across the country, where about 9 million lead service lines need to be replaced to adhere to the new requirements. About a million of those are in Illinois — the most of any state in the country. Among the five U.S. cities estimated to have the most lead pipes — Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Detroit, and Milwaukee — only Chicago has yet to adopt the latest federal deadline. The rest plan to replace their lead pipes within a decade of 2027. 

Lead can damage the human brain and nervous system, kidney function, and reproductive health, and it’s also an underappreciated cause of cardiovascular problems. 

Lead is particularly harmful to children: It can hamper brain development and cause permanent intellectual disabilities, fatigue, convulsions, comas, or even death. Lead exposure during pregnancy can also cause low birth weight or preterm birth. 

Experts emphasize that there is no safe level of lead exposure. 

In Illinois, the Metropolitan Planning Council found that people of color are up to twice as likely as white people to live in a community burdened by lead service lines.

Because of a three-year grace period in the 2024 EPA rule — the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, or LCRI — the city does not have to begin complying with the new replacement requirements until 2027. But Chicago’s plan outlines a timeline that starts the very same year and is significantly slower. 

“I’m not sure what Chicago is thinking there,” said Marissa Lieberman-Klein, an Earthjustice attorney focused on lead in drinking water.

Chicago is facing a Herculean task. Even with a 50-year timeline, it will have to start moving much faster than its current replacement speed: The city will need to replace more lead service lines annually than the total of 7,923 it managed over the past four years ending in March. Of these replacements, about 60 percent occurred alongside repairs for breaks and leaks or water and sewer main replacements. 

Megan Vidis, a spokesperson for the Chicago Department of Water Management, said Chicago is ramping up its replacement speeds. The city will replace 8,000 lines this year, she said. 

“We have been and will continue to move as quickly as resources allow to replace lead service lines,” Vidis wrote in an email. 

Asked about the feasibility of the current EPA rule’s 20-year replacement timeline, Vidis wrote, “We need substantial additional funding, particularly the kind available to help pay for private side replacements.” That refers to the city’s split ownership structure, where homeowners own one part of the line and the city owns the other.

Erik D. Olson, senior strategic director for environmental health at the NRDC, said these financial woes are a reason for Chicago to put forward a more ambitious replacement plan.  

Olson pointed out that $15 billion in national lead service line replacement funds from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the bipartisan infrastructure law, expire next year.

“If Chicago isn’t beating down the doors to get that money, that is tragic, because that money could evaporate,” Olson said. “They should be front-end loading as much of the service line replacement as they possibly can.”

According to the city, the average cost per full lead service line replacement in Chicago is about $35,000, more than double national estimates. The city hopes to lower costs in the future by replacing whole blocks at a time, rather than single homes like this one. Vanessa Bly / NRDC

U.S. EPA spokesperson David Shark confirmed that Illinois water systems are currently under the new rule. But the agency did not answer specific questions about Illinois’ obligations between now and when the compliance deadlines start in 2027, citing pending litigation on the rule. 

Illinois EPA spokesperson Kim Biggs wrote in an email that the state is operating under the replacement requirements included in the 2021 EPA rule and the state’s law until 2027. 

Lead service lines were required by Chicago’s municipal code — reportedly influenced by lead companies and the plumbers union — for decades after much of the country stopped using them due to health concerns. According to a study published last year, two-thirds of the city’s youngest children — under 6 years old — live in homes with tap water containing detectable levels of lead. 

Drinking water is just one way that people are exposed to lead. It’s also found in soil and paint. But experts estimate that water could make up at least 20 percent of a person’s exposure. 

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When lead pipes corrode, the toxic material can dissolve or flake into water and poison residents without their knowledge. Rising temperatures due to climate change could be exacerbating lead risks, and researchers have found that childhood lead poisoning levels spike during hotter periods.

Perry now lives in Oak Forest, one of Chicago’s southern suburbs, but she also owns the home her mother lives in, on Chicago’s South Side. That home has a lead service line, Perry said, and she doesn’t know when it will be replaced.

The city has “a responsibility to the residents in the city of Chicago to protect them at all costs,” Perry said. “There’s no price that’s too high to pay for safe drinking water.”

Chicago’s plan is based on a 2021 state law requiring that water systems with 100,000 or more lead service lines — which includes Chicago — replace all of them within 50 years from 2027. 

At the time of its passage, this state law was stronger than the federal Lead and Copper Rule Revisions of 2021, which did not require replacement in most cases.

Experts and advocates criticized and even sued the EPA over that rule — enacted by the Trump administration in the final days of the president’s first term — saying it weakened existing efforts to achieve safe drinking water nationwide. 

Near the end of President Joe Biden’s term, the EPA finalized the current rule. Most systems across the country must replace all their lead service lines before 2038, with deferral allowances for places with large proportions of lead service lines — like Chicago, which would likely get until mid-2049 to finish. 

The EPA estimated that each year this rule will prevent up to 900,000 cases of low birth weight and 1,500 cases of premature death from heart disease. Many advocates praised the rule, while others noted that two more decades of lead pipes still pose significant health risks in Chicago.

Full lead service line replacement includes exchanging lead-containing plumbing fixtures that connect different parts of the service line. When lead plumbing corrodes, the dangerous neurotoxin can flake or dissolve into drinking water, causing serious health issues including brain damage. Vanessa Bly / NRDC

But according to the document the city submitted to the state, Chicago’s plan hasn’t yet caught up to the newer federal law. The plan acknowledges the faster federal timeline but notes that Chicago isn’t abiding by that yet.

The city, its plan states, will comply “if the regulations go into effect.”

Nationally, the regulation is already in effect, Earthjustice’s Lieberman-Klein said, and the EPA does not need to release any additional documents to make that true.

But what city officials might be thinking, she said, is that given the continued rollbacks of many environmental and health regulations by President Donald Trump’s EPA, this requirement might eventually be wiped off the books. 

“It’s possible Chicago is just looking at what this administration has been generally saying about rules promulgated by the previous administration, and it’s saying, ‘We’d like to wait and see what they say about this rule,’” Lieberman-Klein said.

Some congressional Republicans tried to revoke the lead pipe replacement rule legislatively, but they missed the deadline to do so. 

Last year, the American Water Works Association — a water industry organization — challenged the rule in court, alleging that its requirements are not feasible. Environmental groups stepped in to defend the rule, but it remains to be seen whether the EPA will do likewise. The agency declined to comment on the pending litigation.

Chicago’s water department cited the lawsuit as one of its reasons for submitting a plan that doesn’t account for the 20-year replacement timeline. But the rule isn’t on pause, Earthjustice’s Lieberman-Klein clarified.

“The litigation does not stay the rule or change its effective date,” she said. “It still went into effect at the end of October and nothing about the compliance dates have changed.”

Over the past few years, Chicago officials say each service line replacement has averaged about $35,000, although they plan to lower these costs by more frequently replacing the service lines for full blocks at a time. This is much higher than national estimates, which range from about $4,700 to $12,000 per line. 

Regardless, it will be no easy feat for Chicago to piece together the funds to finish the job quickly, and big proposed cuts to federal funding would make a challenging task even harder.

The Trump administration’s proposal for the EPA next fiscal year would cut the agency’s budget by more than half. Part of that plan: slashing almost all the money for the low-interest loan program that states rely on to update water pipes.

Read Next Trump cuts hundreds of EPA grants, leaving cities on the hook for climate resiliency Emily Jones

Trump’s budget proposal says “the states should be responsible for funding their own water infrastructure projects.” Chicago’s plan notes that $2 million of expected funding for a program focused on replacing lead service lines in daycares serving low-income communities was lost this year in the blanket elimination of congressional earmarks.

Megan Glover, co-founder and former CEO of 120Water, an Indiana-based company that runs a digital platform to help water systems manage lead replacement programs, wasn’t surprised by the news. Federal funding is a concern for her company’s customers across the country, she said. 

“All grants and earmarks, we’re kind of starting from a ground-zero standpoint,” Glover said. “All of that is kind of up for grabs at this point with the new administration.” 

Anna-Lisa Gonzales Castle is director of water policy at Elevate, a Chicago-based nonprofit focused on water and energy affordability that is also involved with local lead service line replacement programming. She said that ramping up replacement speeds will be a challenge, but homeowners shouldn’t be left on the hook for something that wasn’t their fault.

“We want to see the city move swiftly, and we want to see the federal government and the state bring resources to bear on this too,” she said. “It’s gonna be an all-hands-on-deck approach.”

Explore which areas are most at risk from lead pipes. Sign up to be notified when we release more reporting on Chicago’s lead service lines and an interactive map.

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Chicago residents risk daily lead exposure from toxic pipes. Replacing them will take decades. on Jun 26, 2025.

US prices jump more than 3%, opening up massive $1,500 per tonne gap between US and LME copper prices with Goldman Sachs predicting more gains to come. 

Copper for delivery in September rose more than 3% to a high of $5.1650 per pound or $11,367 per tonne in early trading on the Comex market on Thursday as US markets pull in buyers ahead of likely tariffs. 

In February, the White House directed the US Commerce Department to investigate the need for import tariffs on the bellwether metal, with a report due within 270 days. That triggered a surge in US-bound shipments.

Pre-emptive buying in the US opened up a massive gap between US and London Metal Exchange prices. Benchmark 3-month copper rose a more modest 1.7% to $9,888 per tonne on the LME in early trading in London on Thursday.

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In a note quoted by Bloomberg, investment bank Goldman Sachs said it expected LME prices to rise to a 2025 peak of roughly $10,050 a tonne in August, as supplies outside the US continue to tighten.

“The ex-US copper market has tightened, causing fears of a regional copper shortage despite the global market currently being in surplus,” Goldman said, adding that once the expected 25% import levies are implemented in September, copper prices should retreat to under $10,000 again.

Ready to ship inventories on the LME have declined about 80% this year to less than a day of global usage, prompting steep backwardation and a surge in exports by Chinese smelters. 

The premium for the cash copper contract over the three-month forward dropped to $94 a tonne on Wednesday from $280 on Monday as news of the exports filtered through to the market.

Like other markets, the copper price has been on a wild ride in 2025, hitting all-time highs at the end of March only to come dangerously close to crashing through $4.00 barely a fortnight later. Year to date the orange metal remains up just over 25%. 

Copper price: Chinese smelters ramp up exports, potentially squeezing home market too

The federal Weatherization Assistance Program is the oldest and largest energy efficiency initiative in American history. Born from the 1973 oil crisis, it helps low- and moderate-income households make a litany of upgrades to their homes, such as installing insulation, sealing windows, and wrapping water pipes. The program, known as WAP, is often free and saves residents an average of $372 annually on their utility bills. 

But a report released today by the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy found that many homes need basic — but expensive — repairs before they can participate, something many residents can’t afford. Those households are placed on a deferral list until those improvements are made. Although some buildings are too damaged to fix up and some people manage to get off the list, the research showed that, in 2023, another 7,000 homes could have been repaired but weren’t, due to lack of money. That’s a fifth of the 35,000 homes that the Department of Energy estimates WAP reaches each year.

“We were the first to really figure out what the deferral rates are and why,” said Reuven Sussman, an expert in energy efficiency behavior change at ACEE and an author of the report. “I don’t think this problem is broadly known.”

The Department of Energy, which administers the $326 million WAP budget, works with local companies to weatherize qualifying homes. ACEEE surveyed providers in 28 states about their deferrals. The top reason cited was the poor condition of the roof — an issue that undermines improvements such as attic insulation. Floor damage and outdated electric panels were the other leading justifications for deferring homes. The average cost of bringing a home up to WAP standards, the report found, was nearly $14,000. 

“If you’re eligible for WAP you likely don’t have enough money to pay for it,” Will Bryan, director of research for the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance. “There are households that are falling through the cracks.”

Read Next FEMA moves to end one of its biggest disaster adaptation programs Zoya Teirstein & Jake Bittle

People facing deferrals have a few options, but they are limited and inconsistent. Depending on where these residents live, some public, private, or philanthropic funds are available for critical home repairs. Some states — like Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Vermont — have more specific programs targeting WAP deferrals. Starting in 2022, the federal government also provided money for the Weatherization Readiness Fund, or WRF,  though it only backed it with about $15 million. 

“The government has experimented with some pre-weathization funding, but that hasn’t happened at the kind of scale that it needs to,” said Bryan. And, he added, President Donald J. Trump’s administration and Congress are trying to pull what little money has become available in recent years. The “big beautiful” budget bill that the House recently passed zeros out the budget for both WAP and WRF, as well as related assistance or incentive programs. The impacts of the rollback could be drastic. 

“Elderly people, disabled people, small children — their energy burden is so much higher than other folks because they are on fixed incomes,” said Bryan Burris, vice president of energy conservation programs at projectHOMES, a WAP provider in Richmond, Virginia. The recent influx of state and federal funding has helped his organization cut its deferral rate from around 50 percent to about 20, but that progress is in peril.

“People are in really bad situations,” said Burris. “There is a very big demand for this no-cost program.”

Counselors help people to apply for storm preparation financial assistance through the Weatherization Assistance Program at the Carl Walker, Jr. Multi-purpose Center in Houston.
Kirk Sides / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

ACEEE estimates that it would cost about $94 million per year to make the 7,000 preventable deferrals ready for weatherization. If all those homes were able to receive WAP services, it would save 49,236 megawatt-hours of energy annually and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 153,000 metric tons over the lifetime of the measures. WAP projects also often pay for themselves many times over in lower utility bills.

Evaluating the effectiveness of weatherization readiness programs is more complex. Although they may save homeowners some money on a monthly basis, the greatest gains of major repairs are often indirect boosts in health and quality of life. For example, fixing a roof could help a senior citizen age in place, rather than go to an assisted living facility. Removing toxic substances, like asbestos, from homes could prevent illnesses in children.

“You can potentially save money in the long term by reducing the hazards that people are exposed to,” said Bryan, pointing to a substantial body of research supporting the idea. A 2021 study in the southeastern United States, for example, found that after weatherization, “respondents reported fewer bad days of physical and mental health. Households were better able to pay their energy bills and afford prescriptions.”

While that line of inquiry was beyond the scope of the latest ACEEE report, Sussman said the logic makes sense. Avoiding even a minor trip to the hospital or doctor could save programs like Medicaid or Medicare thousands of dollars. 

“People live with holes in the roof and asbestos and can’t get assistance,”  said Bryan. “It leads to health issues.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why many low-income households can’t afford this free home improvement program on Jun 26, 2025.

Kenorland Minerals (TSXV: KLD) announced on Wednesday that it has optioned three early-stage gold projects located in Northwestern Ontario to Centerra Gold (TSX: CG) (NYSE: CGAU) with a view of developing the assets under a joint venture.

Under their agreement, Centerra, through its subsidiary Thompson Creek Metals Company, will have the option to acquire up to 70% of the Flora, Western Wabigoon and Algoman projects. The properties, covering a combined area of 2,300 sq. km, are all greenfield assets that have seen limited exploration to date.

Shares of Kenorland rose 8.2% at market close Wednesday following the option agreement with Centerra, giving it a market capitalization of C$154.3 million.

Centerra, a 9.9% shareholder of Kenorland, traded 0.8% higher with a market capitalization of C$2.0 billion.

The option agreement is divided into two earn-in periods. First, Centerra can acquire an initial 51% interest in the projects by spending a total of C$10 million on exploration within three years, including C$3.5 million in the first year, and complete at least 10,000 metres of diamond drilling. Kenorland will act as the projects’ operator during this period.

Upon completion of the first earn-in, Centerra would hold an exclusive right to earn an additional 19% interest in the projects by completing a preliminary economic assessment, based on a mineral resource of not less than 1 million oz. in gold equivalent, within seven years of acquiring the initial 51% Interest.

During that time, Centerra must spend a minimum of C$100,000 annually, or provide equivalent value through cash or share payments to Kenorland. If it elects not to exercise this option, a 2% interest will revert to Kenorland, resulting in a 51% interest in the projects for Kenorland and 49% for Centerra.

Once the second option or, if it is not exercised, the interest reversion, is completed, the companies will form a joint venture respective their pro-rata property interests. Successful completion would make Centerra the 70% owner of the JV, while Kenorland retains a 30% free-carried interest through to the completion of a prefeasibility study.

The oil and gas industry will be able to lock up over 200 million acres of public lands under current Senate budget bill

While public land protectors across the political spectrum have been scrambling to strip the sale of over 3 million acres of national public land from the big budget bill going through Congress, a less sexy but equally sinister attack on our public lands has been quietly making its way through the House and Senate. This attack would sell out millions of acres of our public lands to oil and gas companies for a fraction of the current cost, allowing them to lock up millions of acres in drilling leases and putting even more money into the pockets of corporations and billionaires.

These oil and gas provisions, championed by Senator Steve Daines of Montana, would roll back important reforms made by Congress just a few years ago that raised royalty rates for drilling on public land, instituted a fee to nominate lands for auction, and ended the practice of noncompetitive leasing, which allows companies to pick up oil and gas leases on public lands for $1.50 an acre. The bill would also give the oil and gas industry access to drill on more than 200 million acres of public lands — an area larger than Wyoming and Montana combined — through mandated oil and gas lease sales, essentially cutting the public out of the management of public land. These leases start at 10 years but can be extended for decades, keeping lands from being managed for recreational purposes or habitat conservation. The bill would also turbocharge oil and gas leasing in Alaska, mandating four lease sales in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and six lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska over the next ten years.

Massive quarterly lease sales

Only 19 percent of BLM lands in the West are off limits to oil and gas development under their management plans, according to a report by The Wilderness Society. That leaves over 200 million acres open to oil and gas leasing. Supporters of the oil and gas industry claim that leasing more land for drilling will lower energy prices, but there is no evidence to support that. Oil and gas companies currently have over 22 million acres of public land under lease, and almost half of that — 9.7 million acres — has yet to be drilled on. Oil and gas companies have been sitting on about this much public land since the first Trump presidency. There’s no public benefit to allowing them to lock up more land through leasing, especially when the public will be cut out of the decision-making process entirely. This provision would make drilling the de facto priority use of BLM lands, put areas with high recreational and cultural values in danger, and take away the federal government’s ability to say “no” to drilling in inappropriate places.

Royalty rate decrease

The tax cuts for billionaires and corporations in the big budget bill are expected to increase the deficit by around $3 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Slashing the royalty rates for oil and gas production on public lands is essentially a tax cut for oil and gas companies, who raked in $19.8 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2025. The current bill text would roll back the federal royalty rate from 16.7 to 12 percent, the level established over a century ago. This cut would lead to around $6 billion in lost federal revenue, according to a report by Resources for the Future. Again, there’s no public benefit to this. History has shown oil and gas companies don’t pass their savings on to consumers at the pump, they give their excess profits out to investors.

No-fee nomination and noncompetitive leasing

The Inflation Reduction Act ended the practice of noncompetitive leasing, in which companies can buy up leases that don’t sell at auction for pennies on the dollar, as well as implemented a $5 fee for nominating public lands. Both of these reforms were long overdue and have made public land management more efficient. The $5 nomination fee saves the BLM time and money by ensuring companies are only nominating public lands they intend to bid on. Before the fee, the BLM routinely held massive, irresponsible oil and gas lease sales. Between 2017 and 2019, more than 19 million acres of national public lands that were wastefully offered to industry went unsold. Many of these unsold leases then ended up in the bargain bin, where companies could pick them up for just $1.50 an acre and then never even put them into production. In contrast, lease sales held since the IRA passed have brought in average bids between $900 and $2,000 per acre. That’s a much better return for taxpayers.

Nobody wants this

Westerners overwhelmingly oppose these regressive changes, according to a poll conducted earlier this year by the National Wildlife Federation. Over 70 percent of voters in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming said we should keep existing fees for oil and gas development, and over 60 percent in every state opposed reducing opportunities for public input in public land management. The Colorado College 2025 Conservation in the West poll found similar opinions on oil and gas. That poll surveyed voters in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah and found that over 70 percent of voters wanted to prioritize the conservation of clean air and water on public lands over increasing energy development. Only 12 percent of voters polled by Colorado College support lowering the royalty rate on oil and gas extracted from public land.

What now?

Keeping public lands in public hands means defending our right to have a say about what happens on these lands. That includes ensuring oil and gas companies pay their fair share for resources extracted from these lands. Lawmakers like Senator Daines want to give handouts to their oil and gas donors by reducing royalty rates and mandating leasing on hundreds of millions of acres of public lands, even as oil and gas sales held this very month have shown how needless leasing only shortchanges taxpayers and puts treasured public lands at unnecessary risk.

Feature image: Pumpjacks on public land; Source: BLM/Flickr

The post Lawmakers are quietly trying to hand over millions of acres of public land to oil and gas companies appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Germany and Italy are facing mounting pressure to repatriate a combined $245 billion worth of gold stored in the Federal Reserve vaults of New York, the Financial Times reported this week.

According to FT, politicians and taxpayer advocacy groups in Europe have voiced deep concerns over the safety of their gold following verbal attacks by US President Donald Trump on the Federal Reserve. Storing bullion abroad can expose Europe’s financial sovereignty to unnecessary risk, they said.

Germany and Italy currently hold the world’s second and third-largest gold reserves at 3,352 tonnes and 2,452 tonnes, respectively. The US, meanwhile, is by far the largest holder at 8,133 tonnes.

Germany may look to withdraw its gold from US

Leading the push is Fabio De Masi, a former member of the European Parliament and now affiliated with Germany’s new left-wing populist BSW party. Speaking to FT, De Masi said there are “strong arguments” to bring more of Germany’s bullion back home.

Germany began storing a significant portion of its gold reserves in the US during the post-WW2 economic boom. As of today, about a third of its gold (1,200 tonnes) remains with the New York Federal Reserve in Manhattan.

Earlier this year, German newspaper Bild reported that a number of senior figures within the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party have discussed the possibility of pulling its gold stockpile out of the US under the current political climate.

Fed independence concerns

The Taxpayers Association of Europe (TAE) shared similar concerns, with its president Michael Jäger urging Germany’s finance ministry and central bank (and those of Italy) to reduce their dependency on the Federal Reserve.

“Trump wants to control the Fed, which would also mean controlling the German gold reserves in the US,” Jäger said in a Reuters interview. “It’s our money, it should be brought back.”

In Italy, economic commentator Enrico Grazzini recently warned in the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano that “leaving 43% of Italy’s gold reserves in America under the unreliable Trump administration is very dangerous for the national interest.”

US lawmakers push for comprehensive audit of Fort Knox gold

Since returning to office, Trump has repeatedly voiced strong — and sometimes aggressive — criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. This, according to the TAE, undermines its confidence in the US central bank’s independence, and the status of Europe’s gold going forward.

Utah Senator Mike Lee is determined to get public land sales in the federal budget reconciliation bill despite widespread backlash from communities, hunters, ranchers, and members of his own party.

On Monday, the Senate Parliamentarian—a nonpartisan advisor who ensures parliamentary procedures and rules are being followed—ruled out Lee’s original plan to sell off up to 3.2 million acres of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land across the West.

Instead of accepting the ruling, Lee said he is working on a revised plan. Though he has not officially released an updated proposal, Lee said U.S. Forest Service land will no longer be included. BLM land within 5 miles of “population centers” will still be eligible, even though a majority of national public lands near communities are at greater risk of wildfire.

“Western voters have made it clear time and again that they want to protect public lands and they do not support selling America’s public lands to private developers,” said Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Jennifer Rokala. “If Senator Lee or his anti-public lands allies try to bring it back in any form, they will discover the backlash is just as severe.”

Quick hits Lee working on revisions to keep public land sales in budget mega-bill

Associated Press | NPR | PBS News | Outdoor Life | Inside Climate News | Los Angeles Times | KSL | E&E News | Source NM | Salt Lake Tribune | WyoFile

Column: Mike Lee flails as his public land sale triggers firestorm

Public Domain

Teton County wants same federal land sale exemption Montana got

Cowboy State Daily

Trump bid to repeal forest protections faces hurdles

E&E News

Opinion: Public land—land of the free—defines Wyoming

WyoFile

Daines and Sheehy ‘aligned’ in opposition to public lands sale in Senate budget bill

Flathead Beacon

Millions of acres of Colorado forest under threat after Trump reverses longstanding roadless rule

Colorado Sun

Rinella: Will Trump keep public lands in public hands?

The Free Press

Quote of the day

I’m proud to say I’ve worn out two compasses, something that never could have happened behind the Midwest’s fences.”

—Chris Madson, wildlife biologist at The Wildlife Society and longtime Wyoming resident, WyoFile

Picture This @usinterior

Me reaching for a glass of water on my nightstand at 2 AM.

So thirsty! When out and about on public lands this summer, stay hydrated and drink BEFORE you feel thirsty. Take breaks in the shade, drink electrolytes and make sure to carry enough water for the duration of your trip.

Photo by Lori Rothstein

 

(Featured image: Utah Senator Mike Lee. Photo by Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons)

The post Despite opposition, Lee remains determined to sell off public lands appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Ascot Resources (TSX: AOT) has made the decision to place its flagship Premier gold project in northwestern British Columbia on care and maintenance after talks broke down with its mining contractor. Shares of the company plunged.

In a press release Wednesday, the Vancouver-based gold developer said it had been locked in negotiations with Procon Mining after the latter proposed to raise price for services provided at Premier, but the talks did not result in a satisfactory outcome for both parties.

In addition, it said negotiations with alternative mining contractors have also dragged on, resulting in delays in mobilizing a mining fleet to the Big Missouri deposit, which is a critical part of the mine’s restart plan. 

In order to preserve capital, the company has determined that the best path forward is to place Premier on care and maintenance, Ascot said.

Shares of Ascot Resources sank to a new 52-week low of C$0.06 apiece, for a loss of 33.3% on the day. The company’s market capitalization has now fallen to C$97 million ($71 million).

Strategic review

With the latest setback, the company has initiated a strategic review process. Pausing the Premier project, it says, would “provide the management team with the time and flexibility to assess strategic alternatives” to advance it toward sustainable production.

“In the five months since the new management team took over, we have made significant progress. However, like many mine construction projects, operational challenges continue to surface, which in turn take time and capital to address,” Ascot CEO Jim Currie said in a news release.

“Over the next couple of months, we will be assessing our options to help us access the capital needed to successfully bring the project into sustainable production,” he said.

Historic mine

The Premier gold project, located 25 km from the town of Stewart, BC, is home to a former underground gold mine that opened in 1918 and included four deposits – Silver Coin, Big Missouri, Premier and Red Mountain.

While in operation, it was the largest gold mine in North America until its surface buildings burned down, leading to its closure in 1952. By then, the Premier mine had produced over 2 million oz. gold and 45 million oz. silver.

Ascot has been working to return the historic site to production and successfully poured its first gold last April. However, operations were put on hold after just five months due to insufficient underground development.

The company initially aimed to resume gold production again in August after securing over C$100 million since it halted mining last September.

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The spotlight

During the COVID lockdowns of 2020, people in cities all over the world were desperate to get outside. As everything slowed down, residents and city governments organized to block off sections of some streets to cars, instead giving them over to pedestrians and leisure activities — a global phenomenon of “open,” “slow,” or “shared” streets, depending on the local parlance.

One of the most lauded examples of a successful open street was 34th Avenue in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, New York, described by many as the gold standard of what open, human-first streets can look like.

Jackson Heights is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in one of the most diverse boroughs of New York City. More than 60 percent of its population is made up of people who were born outside the U.S. And like many working-class neighborhoods where a majority of the residents are people of color, it suffers from a lack of green space.

“Jackson Heights ranks last in per capita park space in all of New York City,” said Dawn Siff, executive director of the Alliance for Paseo Park, a community-led nonprofit organization that emerged to advocate for the 34th Avenue park. “There’s nowhere for your children to learn to ride bikes,” she said. “My children and my nieces attended, and still attend, two of the seven public schools that are basically right up and down 34th Avenue — and they don’t have room for recess.”

The open street initiative has started to change that. For the past five years, a 1.3-mile stretch of 34th Avenue, now known as Paseo Park, has been closed to cars during daytime hours. The park has become such a beloved fixture of the neighborhood that there are now plans to make it permanent. New York City Council Member Shekar Krishnan, who represents the district that includes Jackson Heights and also chairs the Committee on Parks and Recreation, called it “a lifeline” for the community. “What started out as a necessity during the pandemic has really evolved into an incredible place that brings people together — families, children, seniors,” said Krishnan.

This month, following more than a year of planning and visioning sessions, a group of community members released a report offering an ambitious vision for what the space could look like — and a roadmap for how to transform a temporary structure that has grown organically into an organized way to meet a variety of community needs.

A rendering showing what an improved residential block could look like. Courtesy of Alliance for Paseo Park / WXY

Luz Maria Mercado, the board chair of Alliance for Paseo Park, moved to Jackson Heights with her mother when she was around 9 years old, after her parents divorced. “When my parents were together, they had a house. I had a backyard,” she said. “I came to an apartment with absolutely no green space.” What she noticed, from a young age, was that Jackson Heights did have lovely gardens — in the courtyards of private, gated residences in some of the more upscale corners of the neighborhood. Mercado remembered peering through those gates with a degree of envy. “I would think, ‘Wow, this is so nice,’” she said. “‘It would be so nice if we could have this. But this is not meant for people like me and my mom.’”

Mercado now lives on 34th Avenue with her husband and her own children. It’s a nice building — they even have a little terrace. “But what would I see outside? Cars zooming by,” she said. “It was loud. The air was stagnant.”

The pandemic, and the citywide open streets initiative, created an opportunity to reimagine what the neighborhood could look like. When then-mayor Bill de Blasio opened up an application portal for communities to request an open street in their area, several Jackson Heights residents submitted 34th Avenue, Siff recalled. Initially, the city designated just a few blocks in front of Travers Park. But the community wanted more than that — and they began holding rallies to advocate for it.

“As our rallies grew, so did our open street,” Siff said, and eventually 34th Avenue became the longest open street in New York City: 26 whole blocks. “And as soon as we got that space, something magical happened” — even in the midst of an incredibly dark and scary time, Siff said. “Suddenly, we had this 1.3-mile park space, and people started to make it their own.”

Neighbors organized and volunteered to put the barricades up in the morning and take them down in the evening, allowing cars to pass through at night. People began gardening in the median. They took up running for the first time. They taught Zumba classes and English lessons, and set up food pantries. Kids learned to ride bikes.

“Now that we have Paseo Park, the noise level is down, the air quality is better,” Mercado said. Instead of cars honking, “we hear children outside leaving school, enjoying the space, playing soccer.”

As the pandemic eased and things began to reopen, Paseo Park persisted. In 2021, Alliance for Paseo Park (formerly known as Friends of 34th Avenue Linear Park) began advocating for more permanent infrastructure, circulating a petition that more than 2,600 neighbors signed. As wonderful as the newfound space was, it was still a street — and the daily conversion to a park was being managed by volunteers running on fumes.

The city made some improvements, for instance designating “plaza blocks” in front of schools with markings that indicate the space is for pedestrians. But residents still have a bigger vision — and the city has allocated nearly $90 million in capital funding to make the linear park permanent. Last summer, the alliance, wanting to ensure that money would go toward accomplishing the things that residents most cared about, launched a yearlong process of community engagement.

Over the past year, the organization has run surveys online and on paper, conducted visioning sessions and pop-up tabling sessions, appointed outreach ambassadors to host conversations, and even helped facilitate a survey specifically for kids. A number of core priorities emerged, including safety, uninterrupted space for pedestrians, and climate resilience.

The project is not without its detractors — residents who object to the banishment of cars from the avenue, citing a lack of parking, increased traffic on neighboring streets, and for some, a simple desire to live on a street rather than within a park. But this contingent is a vocal minority, Council Member Krishnan said. “It’s very clear this is a project that is beloved by this community,” he said. “I have run multiple times on a platform where Paseo Park is a central part of my work for our community.”

A rendering shows what a school block might look like with additional improvements. Courtesy of Alliance for Paseo Park / WXY

The Alliance for Paseo Park worked with an architecture firm, WXY, to bring the community’s dreams to life in a design — showing what the space could actually look like, and what sorts of infrastructural improvements could accomplish the goals that residents expressed.

The resulting report presents two possible designs: one prioritizing an expanded “super sidewalk” to give ample room for pedestrians, and another prioritizing a “super median” that would offer more green space in between pedestrian lanes. Different blocks would center different needs, like recreation, rest, and play areas specifically for school kids. Stormwater gardens and other features like permeable pavers would reduce flooding in the area. Retractable bollards would allow essential vehicles to enter when needed — like ambulances, sanitation trucks, and Access-A-Ride, the city’s transportation service for residents with disabilities — another thing community members said was important to them.

Yet another priority residents emphasized was clarity about the use of the space. The report notes that currently, Paseo Park is straining under the need to be everything to the community. This is perhaps most embodied by the competition between pedestrians and riders of two-wheeled vehicles. To ease some of this tension, the report proposes making improvements to a parallel street, Northern Boulevard, to create a protected corridor for bikes, mopeds, and scooters.

While it is detailed, the report is not meant to be prescriptive. “We’re not calling specifically for any measures, but one of the things that we are communicating in this report is that this is possible,” Siff said. Their hope is that the city — and the community — will think big about how the space could be transformed, and how clever designs could meet a variety of needs.

“We’re showing the community, we’re showing the city, we’re showing the state, we’re showing the world that it can be done,” Mercado said. “We just have to have the vision and the resources to implement it.”

As far as that implementation goes, infrastructure projects often move slowly in New York, Siff said. Not to mention, the city is currently gearing up for a mayoral election, with the Democratic primary taking place yesterday. “We need really strong leadership in the city to get this done,” said Siff. But she is hopeful that the next mayor will see the opportunity for impact in this project, and “for New York City to take its place among great cities around the world that are repurposing street space to park space, and giving it back to communities.”

— Claire Elise Thompson

More exposure

• Read: more about the evolution of 34th Avenue’s open street (The New York Times)
• Read: about the data showing just how much the open street has reduced danger to pedestrians and cyclists from passing vehicles (Streetsblog NYC)
• Read: a previous newsletter covering a park project in Atlanta that was designed to reduce flooding in the surrounding area
• Read: another newsletter in which we explored the potential for schoolyards to double as parks, benefitting both students and the whole community
• Read: one more newsletter about a project inviting groups of students in and around Washington, D.C., to design their own pollinator gardens

A parting shot

In December 2022, New York City experimented with a temporary open street on Sundays on the iconic Fifth Avenue, to make more room for holiday shoppers. It marked the first time in half a century that the thoroughfare was closed to cars. The city has repeated the initiative every December since, although last year Mayor Eric Adams scaled it down to just a single day.

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Mia Torres / Grist

Spotlight: Courtesy of Alliance for Paseo Park / WXY

Parting shot: Ryan Rahman / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How a 1.3-mile stretch of street became a much-needed park space in Queens, New York on Jun 25, 2025.