It is also a blank slate, offering a fresh start to a young and energetic generation of newcomers — who vow to build a new Paradise, a smarter community that will never burn again.

“We get to watch it transform,” said Goodlin, 41, who left the comfort of suburban Colorado Springs with her husband and four children to move back home to Paradise.

“We have come so far,” she said. “And we still have so much to do.”

Five years ago, all seemed lost. On the morning of Nov. 8, 2018, the entire town of Paradise was quickly engulfed in flames as residents frantically rushed to escape the Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history.

From the moment high winds broke a worn and aged C-hook on a PG&E transmission tower, causing a 115-kilovolt line to drop onto dry brush and ignite and quickly spread, Paradise became a global symbol of risk, tragedy and negligence.

When the fire was finally contained 18 days later, 85 people had died, about 11,000 homes were destroyed and 153,336 acres were burned, shattering lives and livelihoods. An astonishing 90% of Paradise’s housing was gone. Much of the nearby rural communities of Concow, Butte Creek Canyon and Magalia also were lost.

As climate change has intensified the ferocity of California’s wildfires, many looked to Paradise and asked: Is it time to retreat, not rebuild, from areas that are especially flammable?

Instead, Paradise is changing its strategy. It will rebuild differently, safely. Atop a windswept ridge between two wild canyons, the town is preparing for a hotter, drier climate an inspiration for other California towns at risk of nature’s whims and man’s mistakes.

Its people are changing, too.

A year after the fire, Paradise was such a forbidding hellscape, and residents’ plans for recovery were so tangled in red tape, that the town’s population had dropped from 26,423 before the blaze to just 4,590. Now the town has 9,142 people, about one-third of its former population. If the pace continues, the town expects to fully recover within 20 years.

Two-thirds of this year’s arrivals are new residents, up from one-third in 2019, according to the Paradise Ridge Chamber of Commerce and CSU Chico research. Some hail from crowded California cities; others are out-of-staters, seeking an affordable California dream. On average, they tend to be young. They come full of hope and free of trauma.

“We had never heard of the fire,” said 28-year-old Taylor Tanner, who moved to Magalia in 2021 with her husband Kristofer and two young sons from west Texas.

“Since when does a town get to be completely brand new, in this day and age? Built from the ground up, to be whatever we want it to be?” she said.

This year, more than 400 ballplayers joined the town’s Little League, up from 145 after the fire. The new “Moms Of the Ridge” social group, founded by three young parents two years ago, has 1,300 members. While overall school enrollment remains far below pre-fire levels, the elementary school is bursting at the seams. To prevent crowding, administrators are considering moving older students to the junior high campus.

“Our new families want to get involved in the community,” said Little League president Liz Brewster, who led the post-fire effort to replace burned backstops, bleachers, equipment sheds, fences and fields. “And that’s creating more of a family environment than what we had before the fire.”

Popular stores like Ross, Big Lots and Tractor Supply have opened, buoyed by an economy that until recently was reliant on federal and state grants, donations, insurance payouts and PG&E legal settlements.

But the empty lots and desolate roads are ghostly reminders of neighbors who will never come back.

About 30% of the town is rebuilt. Heartbreak, rising construction costs, insufficient insurance coverage and meager PG&E payouts have kept many people from returning — especially retirees of modest income.

The only hospital in town has permanently closed, leaving residents with no emergency care. The beloved Paradise Cinema 7 is gone, after a long legal battle with its insurer. Gas stations, McDonalds, Burger King and many modest mom-and-pop stores have vanished. The historic Gold Nugget Museum, still waiting for its PG&E settlement check, is storing precious artifacts in cargo containers until it can renovate an old auto transmission shop.

“You can tell, almost by looking at someone, whether they were here,” said survivor Joan Ellison, 68, who is living in a Chico apartment while slowly rebuilding her home. “Because we know something that no one else knows.”

“Our pine trees interlock roots to be stable. They’re upheld by each other. And that’s what we’re doing,” she said.

The first goal was cleaning up the community cutting trees, fixing the water supply, removing toxic debris and dragging away an estimated 20,000 charred husks of cars, some of them deathtraps. At a former Bank of America, the Building Resiliency Center opened to provide one-stop shopping for all construction information. Nine different low-cost floor plans, free and pre-approved by the city, are offered by the Rebuild Paradise Foundation.

The early arrivals were overwhelmingly long-time residents, not newcomers, according to research by CSU Chico geographers Jacquelyn Chase and Peter Hansen. The first two homes were completed in July 2019, nine months after the fire.

Of those who returned promptly, almost all were well-insured. The modest 1960s-era house owned by town councilman and former Mayor Steve “Woody” Culleton, covered by Allstate, had terrible insulation, electric baseboard heat and the dense shade of 16 pine trees. His replacement home, built to modern standards, is larger and more elegant, with solar panels, a sunny porch and a vegetable garden.

Others, like Ellison, said they felt too numb to think straight. Once they got on their feet, things were complicated and expensive.

Recovery was slowed by protracted insurance negotiations. Then COVID hit, and with it supply chain delays in getting even the most basic building materials. PG&E payouts were too little, too late, averaging only 60% of what most residents anticipated. There was competition for contractors. Prices skyrocketed.

“I had everything ready. Everything was approved. I was ready to go,” recalled Ellison. “But costs had tripled. It was horrible. I couldn’t build.” Now, with the help of a nonprofit foundation, she’s finally back on track.

Developers began showing up about a year or two after the fire, buying unwanted parcels for $20,000 to $60,000 each. Because homes are on septic systems, no large subdivisions are planned.

The new Paradise will likely have more apartments, because there is public and private funding for affordable multifamily housing units. About 180 permits have been issued for multihousing projects representing hundreds of units. One project, Paradise Community Village, serves only low-income families.

Almost all of the town’s 32 mobile home parks remain unbuilt. Because they are privately owned businesses, there’s little government aid, said Colette Curtis, the town’s director of Recovery and Economic Development. Most were not adequately insured to rebuild their roads, septic tanks and other infrastructure, she added.

In the surrounding neighborhoods, lots will likely be larger, as residents buy empty adjacent parcels. With lower density, evacuation should be safer, said Goodlin, whose family lived in a trailer until builders finished their custom-built home with an interior sprinkler system, fire-resistant construction and a vast perimeter of defensible space.

New homes are more spacious, on average, than those in old Paradise. Before the fire, 12% of homes had one bedroom; now only 3.6% do. Nearly 70% of new construction features three or more bedrooms. This includes many mobile and modular homes, which represent one-third of all new permit applications.

Downtown will be smaller and more walkable, with new sidewalks, lighting and landscaping, said Mark Thorp of the Paradise Chamber of Commerce.

Many businesses have been waiting for residents to return before committing, he said.

“We’ve had to put a lot of emphasis on the residential sector in order to get the numbers up to sustain businesses,” he said.  “Now, they’re seeing the market. It’s a good feeling to say ‘Let’s get back on this horse.’ It’s a rejuvenating purpose.”

To fortify itself against future disasters, the town has launched 37 projects, such as:

• An emergency notification system. Twenty-one sirens atop steel towers, disguised as Douglas fir trees, emit one minute of loud “Hi-Lo” warning sounds followed by evacuation instructions.  The system can be controlled manually, over the internet or by satellite. Power is hard-wired underground, but each siren also has a solar panel. Many have cameras.
• Widened evacuation routes. One of the major corridors, Pentz Road, is getting a $73 million widening, with a new two-way left turn lane and bike path, which can double as an evacuation route. Skyway, another artery, will be widened to increase its capacity.
• Underground utilities. So far, PG&E, Comcast and AT&T have jointly trenched more than 80 miles, reducing the risk of wildfire ignition, Public Safety Power Shutoffs, and boosting evacuation safety.
• Linked road segments. In a $200 million project, the town aims to connect three of the town’s longest dead-end roads, where people were trapped and died, to a major corridor.
• Toughened residential building codes. During the fire, homes that were built to tough “Wildland Urban Interface” standards were more likely to survive, so that’s the new code. To be extra safe, some homes have steel frames or insulated concrete.
• Fuel breaks. The town hopes to buy some properties on its eastern edge by the Feather River canyon to create buffer zones of low vegetation, which could also be used for hiking trails.

But the dream isn’t just to survive — it’s to thrive, say civic leaders.

A vast fiber optic network could bring high-speed internet to town, and a sewer project will send wastewater from downtown businesses to Chico’s treatment plant, eliminating the old septic systems that have limited growth.

“It would be ‘backward thinking’ of us to do a replacement of our old 1940s, ’50s and ’60s infrastructure,” said Thorp. “We’re in the 21st century.”

Goodlin, who grew up in Paradise, rushed from Colorado after the fire to say goodbye to a town that had surely died. But when she saw it stir to life, her heart softened. Her husband Brett, a CPA, supported the decision to move.

“It’s hard. We feel like pioneers,” said Goodlin, who now leads the Rebuild Paradise Foundation. “We could see the opportunity for a different life for our kids. There’s a realness to living here. We thought: ‘This is where we belong.’ “

Her yard has chickens, nectarines, apples, coyotes and an occasional mountain lion. Her children attend a state-of-the-art high school, with a modern library and science buildings, a new 1,500-seat gymnasium, six new tennis courts and a softball complex.

She is proud that a once-devastated community has become a giant workshop to test solutions to a hotter, drier future.

“At first, people asked: ‘Can this town recover? Should we just leave it? This is too much,’ ” she said.

“Then enough people said, ‘No, we can do it. It’s going to be super hard. But we’ll take it one step at a time.’”

Flyers have been posted in the area and community messages sent out by the California Department Fish and Wildlife via social media to spread the word.

“Recently, we have reason to believe that potentially there are people feeding coyotes in the nearby neighborhood or even on the wetlands edge,” said Melissa Borde, environmental scientist and reserve manager for CDFW. “What we’re looking for is the community support to educate others about not feeding wildlife.”

Officials believe the animals are being fed because they are “habituating” to humans and starting to approach without fear.

“Naturally, coyotes are fearful of humans,” Borde said. “The wildlife conflict incidents are increasing, we noticed, from the urban environment.”

The 1,300-acre coastal estuary is an important open space and coastal wetland with an estimated 800 species living there, including coyotes – they play an important role in helping keep the rodent population under control.

Coyotes are “opportunistic feeders,” feeding on anything from rodents to fruit, garbage and pet food.

“Historically, we had found meats out in the areas and we immediately did outreach,” Borde said. In an area off Graham and Bolsa Chica streets, there was evidence of someone who had put leftover meat in the lot. In a neighborhood near the wetlands, someone left behind steak.

“The one thing that I want to highlight is that the coyotes can be unpredictable and in some cases cause human injury,” she said.

Many attacks are directly related to food sourcing or human feeding.

“We don’t want that, we want visitors to feel safe when they’re here. We also want to protect the wildlife. So prevention is key. Even though humans sometimes think they’re doing good for wildlife, they are actually causing more harm,” Borde said about trying to provide food for the animals. “They become habituated and it can be more dangerous for pets and humans.”

She also warns people to not leave pet food or water outside at home.

“If they’re able to access these things, or if we’re feeding them, it changes their natural behavior,” she said, adding that a “problematic coyote that has become habituated to humans cannot be trapped and released somewhere else because you’re not fixing the problem. You’re just moving it to another neighborhood.”

In some cases, a coyote may have to be killed if it becomes a safety risk to humans.

It is illegal to feed the wildlife, and is considered harassment of animals, Borde said.

“You’re basically altering or disrupting their natural behavior. Naturally, they should be out hunting, foraging – they are part of our ecosystem they need to be eating natural rodents, whatever it be, not human food, not pet food,” she said. “And then it can also cause them to eventually be a human safety risk.”

Last week, there was a human interaction where the coyote wasn’t aggressive, but it wasn’t fearful, either, Borde said.

“That is a sign that they are being fed and it’s near the urban area. It’s right near the neighborhood at the edge of the property where we’re seeing them on the east side of the ecological reserve,” she said.

A month ago, there were seven reports in three days about coyotes approaching humans.

The coyotes recently encountering humans are standing nearby, within 5-to-10 feet, just staring at the people, likely waiting for food, according to reports.

“Hazing is absolutely critical in that situation,” Borde said. “You want to make yourself big, make sounds, clap your hands. Whatever you need to do for human safety that makes that coyote very uncomfortable.”

It’s also important, Borde added, to report encounters so officials can track interactions or acts of aggression.

Min is passionate about green energy, but he said he had too many concerns about the direction of the Power Authority at that time. Many of those concerns soon were spelled out publicly, in audits, investigations and news stories that prompted Orange County to part ways with the agency before service in unincorporated parts of the county even began.

But with new leadership at the helm and an improvement plan in place, the OCPA is showing progress in addressing many of the concerns about prices, transparency and sustainability that critics, including Min, raised during that first year.

For example, the basic energy plan now sold by the Power Authority costs 2% less than Edison’s typical rate, and more of that power comes from wind and other renewable sources. The agency also has implemented policies to increase oversight of its contracts and payments, and taken steps to keep the public better informed, with an updated website that touts that the Power Authority has received a stamp of approval on many of its changes from the state auditor.

The Power Authority also taken a step that seems in line with its core mission, helping to spur development of a new solar project in Riverside County, outside Temecula. Once built, it will boost the green energy supply for all Californians.

The changes have been so dramatic that Min said he’s now happy to join the nearly 115,000 households in Irvine (and more than 200,000 across the county) that buy their power through the OCPA.

“I am very confident at this point in saying I think OCPA is a well-run operation,” Min said. “They are providing significant reductions in carbon emissions while providing very cost-efficient energy.”

Nobody wants to be audited, said Joe Mosca, who’s been serving as interim chief executive for OCPA since the April firing of the Power Authority’s initial CEO, Brian Probolsky. But Mosca said the process also has been “extremely beneficial,” for both the OCPA and its customers.

“Our agency is more mature, more open, more transparent,” Mosca said.

The OCPA’s second year of working with the public will be the true test, and the jury is still out on one key question:

Will Orange County cities and residents buy what the Power Authority is selling?

Promising premise

The OCPA got its start in 2020, with financial support from Irvine and a big push from the local chapter of the Climate Action Campaign, as part of California’s community choice aggregation program.

The idea wasn’t new. Lawmakers approved community choice programs two decades ago to give local governments alternatives to investor-owned utilities, which some argue are too focused on profits and aren’t sourcing their electricity from renewables fast enough to meet clean energy goals. One-third of the power that Edison sells to its traditional customers currently comes from eligible renewable projects, such as solar and geothermal power, and the state’s goal is to reach 60% renewables by 2030 and 100% by 2045. “Green rate” programs — which allow Edison customers to pay more for electricity from greener sources — are small and have long been full, with waitlists in place.

So, instead of relying on utilities to make the green jumps, community choice programs let governments pool resources to support and develop more renewable projects. The traditional utility still delivers the power and maintains the grid, but the locally-controlled nonprofit secures the supply and can set its own targets for prices, the amounts of renewable energy it sells and more. And revenues from the sale of that energy come back to cities or counties that have joined the nonprofit.

That formula has worked. There are 25 community choice aggregration agencies selling power to some 14 million residents and businesses in more than 200 cities throughout California. And OCPA is one of the largest.

The agency offers three tiers of plans for customers, with costs — and levels of renewable energy — escalating in each tier.

The basic plan sold by OCPA is 2% cheaper than Edison’s regular rate, or $1.68 less a month on the average bill. And at least 38% of OCPA’s basic plan energy is from renewable sources, which is 5% greener than Edison’s regular plan.

A second OCPA tier, which touts 69% renewable energy, costs an average of $4.01 a month more than Edison’s regular rate. And the greenest OCPA tier — zero-emission energy powered 100% from renewables — costs an average of $6.85 more a month.

When a city or county opts to join a community choice plan, they choose which tier becomes the default for all of its residents. Each customer then can choose a higher or lower tier, or opt out altogether and stick with traditional utility-provided power.

Buena Park, Huntington Beach and Irvine signed their residents on for the 100% renewable plan, while Fullerton opted to make the 69% plan its default. In April 2022, OCPA flipped the switch for some 31,000 commercial customers in those cities, and in October 2022 it began selling energy to roughly 200,000 residential customers. And, so far, agency data shows most residents are sticking with OCPA, and staying in the tier chosen by their city.

With just those four cities on board to buy cleaner energy, Ayn Craciun, local policy director for the Climate Action Campaign, said her team calculated it would cut as much greenhouse gas from the atmosphere each year as adding a carbon-sinking forest that’s more than twice as large as Yosemite.

But even before cleaner power started flowing to local cities, Craciun said her group and others started to see some red flags.

Concerns mounted

In its early days, Craciun said, the OCPA hadn’t instituted bylaws common in other community choice programs. It wasn’t doing a good job at publicizing meetings or checking registries to show where agency money was going. And she said there were lots of concerns with the qualifications and practices of then-CEO Probolsky.

All of these red flags and more were documented in county investigations and audits by the Orange County Grand Jury and California State Auditor. That led leaders such as Min to call for Probolsky’s resignation.

In December, those concerns prompted a split Board of Supervisors to vote to pull out of a contract with the OCPA to supply power for 130,000 residents and businesses in unincorporated parts of Orange County.

Then, in May, Huntington Beach became the first city to back away from the green power agency. The coastal city already moved all residents to OCPA’s 38% tier and expects to finish transitioning back to Edison by July.

Looking back, OCPA board chair Fred Jung, who’s also the mayor of Fullerton, said there was a bit of “blissful ignorance” when the agency first launched.

“When you’re starting an agency like this, you are so transfixed on the goal of just growing the agency and just doing the boring, mundane, detailed things,” Jung said. “These audits and these investigations, they’re really important to us because they highlight some of the deficiencies that we may have had and things that we overlooked.”

Jung and other OCPA supporters also blame politics for some of the fallout. He noted that when a conservative slate of four new council members was seated in Huntington Beach in December, one of the first issues they asked staff to look into was getting the city out of the community choice power program, which those members labeled a “disaster.”

“You have folks that are running on a platform that says ‘we’re gonna pull out of OCPA’ or ‘we’re gonna dismantle OCPA,’” Jung said. “And it feeds into a lot of this disinformation campaign and misinformation campaign that exists out there — not just for OCPA, but so many other things that involve our society now. It’s unfortunate, but that just seems to be the political reality we live in.”

Min, too, attributed much of Huntington’s stance to a knee-jerk reaction by some on the right today to anything that’s labeled green.

The good news for OCPA was that the audits showed it was in a solid financial position. That suggested it wasn’t doomed to the same fate as Western Community Energy, a community choice plan that served six cities in Riverside County for just over a year before June, 2021, when it became the first such agency in the state to declare bankruptcy.

Instead, OCPA appears to be well on the path to turning things around.

Making changes

That shift began in January, when four of the community choice agency’s five board members were replaced. And one of their first big decisions came in April, when they voted to fire Probolsky.

The new board then voted to make Mosca, who’d been the agency’s director of communications, interim CEO. They cited his credentials as a founding member and chair of San Diego Community Power, which is the second-largest community choice energy program in California, along with his previous experience working for San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas Company.

After reviewing the various audits and investigations of the agency, the board directed staff to develop a 24-point improvement plan to address concerns raised in those reports. The OCPA implemented the final step in July, with sweeping changes to its governance, contract approval process, website, staffing and more.

Eighteen of those suggested changes came from the state audit released in February. Agencies have to send responses to such audits documenting their progress after 60 days, six months and one year. After the 60-day update, the state auditor’s office marked half of the 18 recommended changes as “fully implemented.”

Mosca said they submitted evidence of completing the other half of the suggested changes by the six-month deadline in August. Those reports are now under review, according to Ryan Grossi, spokesman for the auditor’s office, with an update expected soon.

Another early criticism of OCPA was that it had hired too many pricey consultants. While Mosca said that’s normal in the early days of a startup, he said they’ve been bringing more positions in house. By the end of the year, he said they’ll have about 17 employees.

One of those new employees should be a permanent CEO. Applications for that position closed Oct. 18 and the board will be interviewing candidates in mid-November.

The agency’s finances also have grown even more solid than when the audits came out. Later this month, Mosca said they expect to present updated financial reports showing the board that OCPA has $88 million in reserves.

Community choice programs are mandated by law to put excess revenues toward energy programs that benefit the local community, Craciun noted. So she’s excited to see some of that money start coming back to local residents to, say, help them buy electric heat pumps or install solar panels or to build cooling centers throughout Orange County.

What’s ahead

By the time temperatures heat back up next summer, OCPA will likely have parted ways with Huntington Beach’s residents, who make up more than a third of its customer base. But Mosca said he doesn’t anticipate significant financial fallout as a result, since his team can simply buy less power going forward — that is, if another city doesn’t step up to take Huntington’s place.

It doesn’t cost a city anything to join the agency. If a council votes its city in, OCPA’s staff just has to prove to its board and to the California Public Utilities Commission that they can buy enough energy to meet the growing demand. The agency then has a year to ramp up, which means a city that expresses interest now could shift its residents to OCPA power starting in 2025.

“There are a lot of cities that are interested and that we’ve been having conversations with,” Mosca said, as he rattled off names of half a dozen Orange County cities.

Mayors for most cities he named didn’t respond to requests to discuss the seriousness of their interest. A staffer at one city said they’d been having internal talks about the potential benefits of moving to OCPA, but he spoke on background out of concern for political fallout given what happened in Huntington Beach.

Only one city Mosca mentioned sent a firm response, with Seal Beach City Manager Jill Ingram saying via email that they have no plans to discuss joining the OCPA.

But with Edison asking state regulators to approve a rate increase of more than 6%, which would raise average bills by more than $9 a month starting Jan. 1, Craciun thinks city councils that choose not to give their residents a choice to get energy from community choice programs such as OCPA will come to regret that decision. And she said that’s without accounting for environmental costs of continuing to rely on power that comes primarily from burning fossil fuels.

“The cost of inaction for cities is great.”

As the US gears up for a winter heavily influenced by the first strong El Niño in years, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have released maps that offer insight into where snow could pile up.

El Niño – a natural ocean and weather pattern in the tropical Pacific – is forecast to reach the most significant level since a very strong El Niño in 2015-2016 fostered the warmest winter on record across the contiguous US, according to NOAA.

While no two El Niño winters are the same, the pattern typically brings wetter and cooler weather to the southern US while the north becomes drier and warmer. And that’s exactly what’s expected this winter.

However, wetter weather doesn’t necessarily mean more snow. And when it does snow, amounts can vary wildly from one location to the next.

This is where the new maps come in. They show where snow is more or less likely during El Niño winters compared to average.

There’s just one caveat: these maps are historical guidebooks, not forecasts, for how the season’s snow could play out. An actual snowfall forecast would account for a variety of atmospheric and climatological factors, not just El Niño.

“El Niño nudges the odds in favor of certain climate outcomes, but never ensures them,” Michelle L’Heureux, one of the two scientists behind the new maps, explained in a NOAA blog post.

The map above depicts how much snow differs from average across all El Niño winters, regardless of El Niño’s strength. The drier trend that’s typical across the northern US shows up well in the tan and brown shading, while the wetter, snowier trend across the southern US appears in the blue shading.

This pattern comes from the jet stream’s shift south, pushing storms across the southern tier of the country at the expense of the north. And an increase in storms during the winter means snow is more likely.

The stronger an El Niño is, the more amplified its impact becomes. The map below shows the same data for stronger El Niño winters. The pronounced darker hues represent more extreme shifts in snowfall during a strong El Niño compared to an average one.

The big snow winners are the mid-Atlantic, the high elevations of the Southwest and California, and the South, albeit with an important caveat.

It still needs to be cold in order to snow, so chances don’t vary as much from normal in portions of Texas and the Southeast, which tend to remain too warm for flakes to fly.

El Niño’s jet stream effect is particularly noticeable in the highest terrain of the West, where cold and snow isn’t usually hard to come by. Mountains in the Southwest and California thrive while the Northwest misses out because of fewer storms.

Storms that affect the mid-Atlantic’s snow chances typically take a track along the spine of the Appalachians or push off the coast and become nor’easters.

These nor’easters can get “juiced up” by abundant tropical moisture during El Niño and deliver “two to three big snowstorms” on average, according to Jon Gottschalck, chief of the Operational Prediction Branch of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

This could bring above-average snowfall to places like Washington, DC, and Baltimore, where less than an inch fell last winter.

Even though the Northeast typically misses out on snow during a strong El Niño winter, all it takes is one massive storm, like a “juiced up” nor’easter, to skew snow totals for the whole season.

Snow lovers in the Northwest and Midwest will also have to join their Northeast counterparts in hoping for a big storm. Stronger El Niños have caused less snow than average in the past.

Removing snowfall totals from the map and focusing on the number of stronger El Niños with below-average snowfall helps suss out outlier storms.

On the map above, darker reds indicate areas that have experienced more years of below-average snowfall during moderate-to-strong El Niño winters.

Parts of the typically snowy Midwest and Northeast which also suffer from snowfall deficits jump out clearly, a sign that this may be where El Niño steals the most snow, most often.

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Peering over the edge of research vessel Coral Reef II as it sailed through the Florida Keys, Shedd Aquarium postdoctoral fellow Shayle Matsuda saw white.

Matsuda and a group of researchers from the aquarium and other institutions witnessed firsthand how coral reefs that were healthy and vibrant just two months earlier had quickly bleached by the time they returned to the Sunshine State for their most recent trip.

An unprecedented rise in ocean temperatures off the coast of Florida early in the summer made headlines as it caused countless dead fish to wash ashore. But the impact had an even wider reach than was initially evident, according to the Shedd’s research in partnership with the University of Miami, Palm Beach Zoo and the University of Southern California.

Between 90% and 95% of corals they surveyed at 76 sites across the Keys and Dry Tortugas over the span of a week showed signs of extreme bleaching, said Shedd research biologist Ross Cunning. Some coral species, such as endangered branching corals like staghorn and elkhorn, were nearly all dead.

“We’re pulling up to these reefs on the boat and you could see, before even getting in the water, the stark, bright white coloration of these bleached corals,” Cunning said. “It was unmistakable. So, we knew before even getting in the water how severe these impacts were.”

The further south researchers went, the worse the bleaching was. Throughout the Dry Tortugas, they dove as deep as 60 feet, hoping for a greater chance of encountering survivors. But they did not find a single viable staghorn coral.

Researchers are calling it the “worst coral bleaching event that Florida has ever experienced.”

Corals bleach when waters are too warm, as the tiny algae living in their tissues — which provide them with essential nutrition through photosynthesis — cannot survive in high temperatures. Losing their primary food source causes corals to lose their color and turn white, leaving them vulnerable to starvation and disease.

“Bleaching is not inherently bad as a stress response,” Matsuda said. The researchers explained corals expel algae in response to seasonal rises in temperatures, so even if a coral is bleached it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s dead.

If temperatures go back down in time, that can alleviate the heat stress on corals and allow them to regain the symbiotic algae they lost, as well as their nutritional source and their color.

It becomes a problem, however, when the bleaching lasts a few weeks too long and the corals continue to starve. “They will then die,” Cunning said.

Corals serve as habitat for many other animals and fish. A quarter of all marine life spends a significant portion of their life on coral reefs, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Being one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, coral reefs are often called the rainforests of the sea — and corals are their building blocks.

“It would be like a forest with no trees. You have no trees, you have no forests; there’s no habitat for all the animals that live in the forest. It’s the exact same thing with coral reefs,” Cunning said. “If you have no corals, then you have no coral reefs. So as the corals die off, then their skeletons will, over long periods of time, start to break down like dead trees eventually fall over. And you lose that structure, you lose that habitat, and that’s when we’ll start to see the losses of all these other species that no longer have habitat.”

The Shedd has been studying heat tolerance in corals for several years, and has been helping in international conservation efforts for endangered Caribbean corals for over a decade.

In 2019, the Tribune accompanied Cunning and other Shedd researchers on a trip to the Bahamas where they placed live coral fragments on open-ocean underwater nurseries to identify the hardiest, most heat-resistant strains of coral that will be likelier to perform better and survive in warming oceans.

It’s a mission that has become somehow even more important now than it was four years ago, “because what happened in Florida this summer (is) going to be happening more and more frequently and more intensely,” Cunning said.

At the Shedd, aquarists grow and propagate corals — most of their collection hails from the Pacific since Caribbean corals are banned from the aquarium trade — which Cunning and Matsuda use to complement their field research with experimental on-site work.

On a recent weekday behind the scenes of a busy aquarium, Cunning held up a dead staghorn coral, its rough surface a stark white and covered in tiny nodes that would have been occupied by polyps, or coral tissue that looks like little tentacles, if the specimen was still alive.

“When we were in the field in September, we had to look very closely at a lot of these,” he said, his eyes scanning the dead coral in his hands. “A lot of them looked like they were a bright, clean white; some of them, we would look up close and we would be able to detect a little bit of that tissue remaining in those columns. But others, we looked very closely and saw nothing, indicating that either there was so little living tissue left that we couldn’t even see it with our eyes, or they had died recently.”

“On the one hand, we all knew that this was coming. This was not really a surprise, because we’ve known for a very long time what hot water temperatures do to corals,” Cunning said. “And we’ve known for a very long time that we are causing (the) warming of our planet and our oceans. So in that sense, it’s not a surprise, but it was still a shock to witness and just heartbreaking to see.”

For researchers, the mass bleaching and death of corals in Florida represent a bellwether or indicator of what is to come for coral reefs in warming oceans worldwide.

“There are no reefs anywhere in the world that are immune to, or protected from, the impacts of global climate change,” Cunning said. “We cannot engineer our way out of this problem — for coral reefs or for the rest of our planet, for that matter. We must stop emissions and (the) further warming of our planet. And that needs to happen now, and at a global scale. So far we have not seen the level of action to address climate change that we need to ensure the survival of reefs and the rest of our planet.”

To learn more about corals, guests can visit the Wild Reef and Oceans exhibits at the Shedd Aquarium, 1200 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive; 312-939-2438 and sheddaquarium.org

adperez@chicagotribune.com

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

OKITIPUPA, Nigeria — It was the dead of night when the ship caught fire, Patrick Aganyebi remembers, but the flames made it seem as bright as day.

The explosion that night woke him and knocked him to the floor. He tucked his phone and his ID card in his pockets, strapped on a life jacket and made his way to the upper deck. As the flames barreled toward him, he prepared to jump nearly 100 feet (30 meters) into the sea.

Five workers were killed and two others presumed dead in the blast on the Trinity Spirit, a rusting converted oil tanker anchored 15 miles (24 km) off the coast of Nigeria that pulled crude oil from the ocean floor. It was by the grace of God, Aganyebi said, that he and two fellow crewmen escaped, rescued by a pair of fishermen as the burning vessel sank along with 40,000 barrels of oil.

The Trinity Spirit’s explosion in February of last year stands among the deadliest tragedies on an oil ship or platform in recent years. The Associated Press’ review of court documents, ship databases, and interviews with crew members reveals that the 46-year-old ship was in a state of near-total disrepair, and the systems meant to ensure its safe and lawful operation — annual inspections, a flag registry, insurance — had gradually fallen away.

The Trinity Spirit fits a pattern of old tankers put to work storing and extracting oil even while on the brink of mechanical breakdowns. At least eight have been shut down after a fire, a major safety hazard, or the death of a worker in the last decade, according to an AP review. More than 30 are older than the Trinity Spirit and still storing oil around the world.

Jan-Erik Vinnem, who has spent his career studying the risks of offshore oil production, said he’s sometimes shocked when he sees pictures of oil ships in Africa.”I call them ‘floating bombs,’” he said.

This story was supported by funding from the Walton Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

AGING HULLS

The Trinity Spirit was part of a class of vessels that extracts oil offshore and stores it at sea. They are known as floating production storage and offloading units — FPSOs — or as FSOs, floating storage and offloading units, when used only for storage. Since the 1970s, they’ve become increasingly popular for developing oil in deep waters and in places where no pipelines exist. According to the environmental group SkyTruth, there are some 240 in operation today.

FPSOs are unlike most ships for one key reason: They stay in place. Once attached to the ocean floor, they can linger at the same oil field for years or even decades. They may be surveyed by in-country regulators or hired inspectors, but they operate outside the normal flow of shipping traffic and the added safety and legal inspections that take place in port.

“If a vessel is sitting in a country’s domestic waters and is not going around trading … then you’re not going to have that same level of oversight,” said Meghan Mathieson, strategy director at the Canadian-based Clear Seas Centre for Responsible Marine Shipping.

More than half the current fleet of FPSOs are recycled oil tankers, according to Oslo-based Rystad Energy, which keeps data on the ships. Senior analyst Edvard Christoffersen said that without a major repair, most oil ships have hulls built to last about 25 years. But some FPSOs are used far longer, sometimes to dangerous effect.

In the same month that the Trinity Spirit caught fire, inspectors found problems with an aging FPSO moored off the coast of Malaysia. The Bunga Kertas was built as an oil tanker in the 1980s, and press coverage of its conversion to an FPSO in 2004 said the vessel had an intended service life of 10 more years.

But it was 18 years later when a safety issue on the Bunga Kertas led to a pause in operations. The ship’s hull had ” integrity issues,” according to stakeholder Jadestone Energy. Four months later a diver was killed while repairing the damage. Petronas, the operator at the time, did not respond to a request for comment.

Until this fall, another aging ship floating off the coast of Yemen seemed dangerously close to spilling a massive amount of oil. The FSO Safer was built in the same year as the Trinity Spirit, and became a floating hazard over years of neglect amid the country’s civil war. Seawater had leaked into the ship’s engine room by 2020.

“It could break up at any time – or explode,” the United Nations said in a statement this spring.

The ship held more than a million barrels of oil — risking a spill that could have decimated fisheries in the Red Sea, threatened desalination plants and washed oil on the shores of countries around the Horn of Africa, according to the U.N. After years of alarm and negotiations, the oil was transferred onto another tanker this August, but the rusting Safer remains off Yemen’s coast, awaiting funds to be scrapped.

Age isn’t the only measure of a ship’s health: Climate, storms and wave patterns can add stress to ship components or increase the pace of corrosion, just as careful maintenance can extend a ship’s life.

But the fleet’s growing age is well known in the industry. The average hull age of FPSOs has increased from 22 to nearly 28 years since 2010, according to Rystad Energy. The American Bureau of Shipping — one of several companies known as classification societies that certify vessels’ safety — launched a working group in 2021 to address the challenges of older FPSOs, noting that 55 ships were approaching the end of their intended lives.

“A lot of these things are foreseeable,” said Ian Ralby, a maritime security expert who helped sound the alarm about the Safer.

“If they are not well maintained and not watched carefully,” Ralby said, “they can sink, they can spill, and they can, as the Trinity Spirit showed, blow up.”

DANGEROUS TO ABANDON

There has been little to no public explanation of what led to the Trinity Spirit’s explosion, though multiple Nigerian agencies had responsibility for overseeing the ship. The Trinity Spirit had been on the same oil field for more than two decades. According to Aganyebi, after the ship arrived in Nigeria, it was never brought to shore for major upgrades or repairs.

Warning signs began years before it caught fire. In 2015, the American Bureau of Shipping canceled its classification and ceased inspections of the ship. There’s no record the Trinity Spirit had insurance after that point, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence. In the next several years, the ship lost its privilege to fly the flag of Liberia, becoming a stateless vessel.

By 2019, Nigeria’s petroleum regulator had revoked the Trinity Spirit’s license to pump oil. Nigeria’s head of maritime safety, quoted in local press coverage, said his agency had directed the ship to stop operating five years before the blast. Yet the Trinity Spirit was never forced to leave.

Up till the moment of the explosion, there was oil on board. As recently as 2021, according to satellite imagery and ship transponder data, oil was loaded onto a tanker that later docked at a Shell refinery in the Netherlands.

Adeyemi Adeyiga, a spokesperson for Nigeria’s Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, which regulates the country’s oil resources, said the sale was legal because the oil was produced before the license was revoked. And a spokesperson for Shell said the company conducts robust reviews of its supply chain and complies with all laws and regulations.

Though the federal government investigated the Trinity Spirit’s explosion, more than a year later no findings have been released. For months, it seemed the only scrutiny would fall on the surviving men.

Not long after their escape, and still in the throes of recovery, Aganyebi and a fellow crewman were arrested on accusations of “Murder, Arson, and Malicious Damage,” according to their charging documents. Police were acting on a complaint from Shebah Exploration and Production Company Limited — the Trinity Spirit’s longtime operator.

An attorney in Lagos took on the case pro bono.

“They committed no offense, they did nothing wrong. They were staffers of the company,” Benson Enikuomehin said. In an interview, he accused Shebah of drumming up criminal charges to distract from the company’s missteps. Anything that took place on the Trinity Spirit should be considered illegal after the license to the oil field was revoked, he said.

Yinka Agidee, an attorney specializing in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector who was not involved in the case, said the Trinity Spirit represented an “accident waiting to happen,” and showed that local authorities failed to enforce their own orders.

“I’m not sure if it’s a question of people closing their eyes or deliberately not doing what they’re supposed to have done,” she said. “But that has resulted in an accident and there has been a loss of life. So we need some explanation.”

Interviews and an exploration of documents provide a lack of clarity about who was responsible for the Trinity Spirit in the final years of its decline. Though Shebah hired Aganyebi and the rest of the Trinity Spirit’s crew, CEO Ikemefuna Okafor said in an email to the AP that the company wasn’t responsible for the ship’s neglect. The company reported the surviving crew to police, he said, because it had evidence of illegal storage of oil on the ship.

According to Okafor, liquidators seized ownership of the Trinity Spirit in 2018 due to Shebah’s outsized debt. Yet in a deposition given one year before the explosion, the company’s former president, Ambrosie Orjiako, described how Shebah continued to run operations.

Sustaining fuel purchases, food supplies, and “skeletal manpower” wasn’t easy, Orijako said, because “there’s no revenue coming in.” But he managed to fund the minimal operations with family resources, he said, because the FPSO “would be dangerous to abandon.”

Adeyiga, the spokesperson for Nigeria’s Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, said it was still finalizing its investigation into the ship’s explosion and would continue working to prevent similar tragedies from happening.

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but issued notice in December that all FPSOs and FSOs in Nigeria’s waters must have a flag, be certified by a classification society, and maintain official plans for ship maintenance and emergency response.

SAVE OUR SOULS

The deck of the Trinity Spirit was an expanse of rust. Orange rust coated the floor, crept over pipes and trailed from crevices in the walls, according to cell phone photos taken four months before the explosion. Equipment failures plagued the ship’s interior: The engine room flooded twice, Aganyebi said, and the main generator plant was damaged and never repaired.

Shebah had started running operations on the ship in 2004, taking over from Houston-based ConocoPhillips. But the site’s wells had passed peak oil production several years earlier, according to the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie. Within a few years Shebah’s venture showed signs of financial stress.

Oil and gas operators tend to operate on the edge of financial wealth or financial ruin, said David Hammond, founder of the nonprofit Human Rights at Sea.

“These things go from boom to bust,” he said. “The workers are the last people to be looked after.”

Aganyebi worked in the engine room of the Trinity Spirit. Within a year of joining the crew in 2014, he said, Shebah stopped reliably paying his wages. Lawrence Yorgolo, who operated the crane on the ship, and Pius Orofin, a deck operator — the only other survivors of last year’s fire — alleged the same in interviews with the AP. The men said they stayed on board the ship because they had few other options and hoped they would someday be paid.

The staff sent repeated letters asking for the money they were owed, the men told AP. One of their last attempts was dated July 2019, with a subject line of “SAVE OUR SOUL (SOS).” They wrote they had worked 15 months without salary and endured, with “pains and hardship,” the “harsh condition and occupational hazards” of life on board the Trinity Spirit.

Shebah by that time owed millions of dollars. A trio of banks had sued the company over its alleged failure to make payments on a $150 million loan, and in 2016 a judge ruled that Shebah must repay nearly the full amount. A government-run entity, the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, moved to take over the company and the assets of its president. The ship’s staffing dwindled from nearly 40 people to 10.

For those who remained, there were times on the ship when there was nothing to eat, the survivors told AP. Yorgolo recalled how the crew went hungry one year on Christmas. On a separate occasion — the worst of them, he said — the engine room flooded and the staff worked for three days without food. The radio operator sent a message pleading with oil operators nearby to come to their aid.

“Our management was furious,” Yorgolo said.

When the radio operator next went to shore, according to Aganyebi, Yorgolo and Orofin, Shebah didn’t allow him back on the ship. He was the designated person to fire a flare or call for help in an emergency. Had the radio operator been on board the night of the explosion, Aganyebi said, “maybe those people that have died — they wouldn’t have died.”

The AP’s attempts to reach the former radio operator were unsuccessful.

When it broke in two and began to sink, the Trinity Spirit had at least 40,000 barrels of oil on board, according to Nigeria’s environmental department, which responded to examine the spill. It was capable, like most FPSOs, of storing more than a million barrels.

The agency said oil wasn’t leaking from the submerged tanks nor had it washed up on shore, but letters still arrived from community members in nearby Ondo and Delta states complaining about the spill. Oil sheens were visible fanning out from the vessel in satellite imagery for days.

Five bodies were recovered, and two were never found.

SINKING SHIP

Among the more than 30 ships identified by the AP as older than the Trinity Spirit is the Al-Zaafarana, floating off the coast of Egypt. At 54 years, it is one of the oldest FPSOs still in service. Close behind it are FPSOs in Malaysia and Brazil, each at least half a century old.

Along Nigeria’s coast, about 200 miles (320 km) south of where the Trinity Spirit caught fire, the FPSO Mystras is still in service at 47 years old, although industry reports have noted structural issues on the ship. The classification society DNV severed ties with the Mystras three years ago, ending its regular inspections. According to Rystad Energy, it was originally designed to operate only through 2014.

The Mystras’ owner, NNPC Limited, did not respond to AP’s requests for comment.

Yorgolo, who was the only survivor not charged with a crime, fell on his back when he jumped from the burning vessel and was unconscious when fishermen pulled him into their boat. He believes he wasn’t named as a suspect only because he spent months in the hospital suffering from an injured spine.

The charges were dropped in October last year after the Ondo State Ministry of Justice reviewed the case. In conversations with AP, the men vehemently denied setting the vessel on fire or illegally storing oil. They blamed the explosion on their employer, Shebah, and the years without maintenance on the ship.

For Aganyebi, it was clear the company had abandoned the Trinity Spirit long ago.

“No medical personnel, no safety officer, no radio man in that gigantic vessel,” he said.

Off the coast of Nigeria, the ship is still visible — split in two pieces and half submerged. As recently as September, in satellite imagery, oil appeared to be leaking from the site of the wreck. It’s unclear when authorities will remove the hazard or salvage the remaining oil, as slowly, the ship sinks further into the sea.

Wieffering reported from Washington, D.C. Associated Press reporters Michael Biesecker in Washington, Sarah El Deeb in Beirut and Chinedu Asadu in Abuja, Nigeria, contributed to this report.

Federal officials announced this week that last winter’s heavy snowpack and cuts in use likely will be enough to keep the river basin’s two major reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, from draining to water levels too low to generate power or move water downstream for at least three years.

Federal officials, the seven Colorado River basin states and 30 tribes in the basin are negotiating the future of water management on the Colorado River and creating the next set of guidelines that will govern use of the critical water source in decades to come. The negotiations will be a “rollercoaster ride,” but history shows that the states are capable of coming to a consensus, said Jennifer Gimbel, a senior water policy scholar with Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center.

“There’s hope,” she said. “But it’s not going to be easy.”

The river, which begins in Colorado and ends near the Gulf of California in Mexico, provides water for 40 million people, irrigates 5.5 million acres of agricultural lands that feed the country, generates electric power, fuels recreation-based economies across the West and provides important habitat for several endangered species.

Here is a look at what’s at stake.

What are the major challenges?

The river’s water supplies are plagued by two major problems.

First, the river is drying as the West becomes warmer and more arid. Warmer temperatures speed evaporation, further reducing a lack of water from less precipitation. One report by the U.S. Geological Survey found the Colorado River’s flows have dropped by 20% since 1900 primarily due to warming.

Second, the people who created the 1922 compact that governs how water is used overestimated how much water existed in the first place. The lines of supply and demand crossed in 2000.

That will be negotiators’ key problem to solve, said Taylor Hawes, Colorado River program director for The Nature Conservancy.

“The basic question is: How do we learn to live with what Mother Nature supplies?” she said.

“Without a plan, we risk moving from crisis to crisis to crisis,” she added. “And that usually sets up a dynamic where there are many losers.”

What will negotiators look at?

Several key agreements about the management of the Colorado River expire on Dec. 31, 2026, including the last set of operating guidelines agreed to in 2007. Those guidelines and a series of agreements that followed determined how cuts to water supplies would be made in the face of worsening drought.

In 2007, conversations about the possibility of long-term drought were beginning, but the situation wasn’t as dire as now. Just six years prior, the conversation about the river focused on how to share surplus water, said Elizabeth Koebele, an associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada at Reno.

Since 2007, water levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell — the savings banks of the Colorado River basin — have dropped precipitously. Combined storage of the reservoirs sits at 36% now, down from nearly half full in 2007 and from 92% capacity in 1999.

“We’re at a time where we need an overhaul,” Koebele said. “They are a big opportunity to bring the Colorado River to sustainability and more sustainable management.”

What are the key issues?

One of the key problems negotiators must address is overuse by the Lower Basin states, experts said. 

The three states in the Lower Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada — are allocated 7.5 million acre-feet a year as are the four states in the Upper Basin: Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico. Mexico also gets 1.5 million acre-feet. An acre-foot equals the amount of water it would take to cover a football field in one foot of water, which is generally considered enough water for two households’ annual use.

The Lower Basin repeatedly has used more than its annual allotment of 7.5 million acre-feet while the Upper Basin uses less than its allotment. Between 2019 and 2021, the Lower Basin used more than 9 million acre-feet every year while the Upper Basin used less than 5 million acre-feet. In both 2020 and 2021, millions of acre-feet more water flowed out of Lake Mead and Lake Powell than flowed in.

“We’re going to have to reduce our water use, no matter what,” Hawes said. “We’re going to have to move away from the current sense of entitlement that a lot of water users have, and that’s not going to be easy.”

Officials also need to re-evaluate expected flows of the river and create a more accurate annual average flow from which to base agreements, Gimbel said. When the 1922 Colorado River Compact was signed, people estimated annual flows of up to 20 million acre-feet. That calculation was an overestimate and climate change has worsened the deficit even further. In recent years flows have been closer to 10 million acre-feet, Gimbel said.

“Climate change has not only reduced those flows, but we have more extreme years more often,” she said.

Negotiators will also need to find a way to include the 30 tribes in the basin in negotiations, Gimbel said. The tribes have rights to about 3 million acre-feet of water — about a quarter of annual flows — but many of the tribes have been unable to use that water. All the tribes have been historically excluded from negotiations on the river.

Other issues negotiators could consider include whether to include reservoirs in the Upper Basin — like Blue Mesa Reservoir on Colorado’s Gunnison River — in the system or whether to prioritize filling Lake Mead over Lake Powell.

“At this point, we aren’t ruling out any alternatives,” said Russ Callejo of the Bureau of Reclamation during a Monday webinar about the post-2026 process.

Why does this matter to Coloradans?

The Colorado River starts as a trickle in Rocky Mountain National Park and flows to the state’s western border with Utah. About 40% of the water used in Colorado comes from the river, according to the Colorado Water Conservation Board.

Along the way, the river supports livestock grazing, timber harvesting, oil and gas drilling, orchards and vineyards, wheat and alfalfa fields, fishing, rafting, ski-area snowmaking and endangered species.

About half of Denver Water’s supplies come from the Colorado River, which the utility pumps over the Continental Divide to provide to 1.5 million people in metro Denver — about a quarter of the state’s population.

In Colorado and across the river basin, the vast majority of water — about 80% — is used to grow crops and raise livestock that feed the region and the country.

Less water could lead to higher utility costs, more expensive food, fewer recreation opportunities, lost tourism money and more.

“We’re all connected in this basin and if the river fails or crashes, we don’t know where the impacts stop,” Hawes said.

What do Colorado entities want?

Colorado and other Upper Basin states are calling for permanent reductions to the amount of water Lower Basin states receive as well as a system that divvies up water based on precipitation and river flow, not on how much water is in the reservoirs. Using the latter method since 2007 has “proven to be disastrous,” the Colorado River District said in its letter to the Bureau of Reclamation.

The Upper Basin regularly experiences shortages because the amount of water available to the region in any given year depends on the amount of precipitation the region receives, the Upper Colorado River Commission wrote in a letter to the Bureau of Reclamation. Lower Basin states, however, draw their Colorado River water from the two reservoirs and are used to a much more predictable supply, often regardless of the amount of water flowing that year.

One of the problems with calculating releases from the dams based on reservoir levels is that reservoir levels are slow to change — a dry winter may not manifest itself in reservoir levels for a long time, Koebel said. Also, not all the water in the reservoirs is available for use. Some water is stored there for specific purposes, like water Mexico has stored.

Colorado’s top negotiator for the river, Becky Mitchell, has focused on seven priorities in the talks, including acknowledging that climate change is real; preventing overuse in the Lower Basin; preventing cuts in the Upper Basin and defending Colorado’s rights; preserving tribes’ water rights; and releasing water from Mead and Powell based on hydrology, not reservoir levels.

“The Post-2026 Negotiations will determine operations at Lake Powell and Lake Mead — both of which are far downstream from Colorado — and must end the cycle of near-term crises caused by Lower Basin overuse,” Mitchell said in an emailed statement.

The two tribes with reservations in Colorado called for inclusion in the negotiations.

“As a sovereign in the Basin, the Tribe does not want to be updated on the negotiations between the States and the Federal team after decisions are made; the Tribe wants to be at the table during discussions and negotiations,” Melvin Baker, chairman of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, wrote in a letter to the Bureau of Reclamation.

Manuel Heart, chairman of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, called for large cities with the most per-capita use to reduce their consumption.

What is the timeline?

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation this summer solicited input from governments, tribes, nonprofits, utilities, water managers and others on how the river should be managed after 2026. Last week, the agency published a summary of those comments.

“As the range of alternatives is developed, Reclamation is committed to a collaborative, inclusive and transparent process with our partners, stakeholders and the public,” Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said in a news release.

Now, the bureau is tasked with writing an environmental impact statement that will analyze potential options for managing water in the basin under a wide range of potential environmental conditions.

The draft environmental impact statement will be published in December 2024, according to the agency. The public will have a chance to comment on the draft before the bureau publishes a final environmental impact statement in late 2025.

The bureau will make a decision in early 2026 on which guidelines it will use.

The Santa Cruz sea otter that shot to fame after photos spread worldwide of her stealing and riding on surfers’ boards has been photographed with a tiny newborn pup at her side.

Otter 841, with her distinctive blue tag from former captivity, was spotted Tuesday with a miniature version of herself at the same iconic surfing spot where she perpetrated mayhem on the waves this summer, and for months evaded capture by authorities deploying boats, nets, cages and scuba divers.

San Jose State University environmental studies professor and Santa Cruz resident Dustin Mulvaney, who has made a hobby out of spotting and photographing Otter 841, stopped by Lighthouse Point and the Steamer Lane surf break Tuesday and saw the animal, then noticed she was not alone. “I was like, ‘That looks like two otters,’” Mulvaney said Wednesday during a visit to the same location.

In recent weeks 841 — born in captivity at a UC Santa Cruz research center, and raised by her mother at the Monterey Bay Aquarium before being released — had appeared to have a swollen belly, Mulvaney said. He suspected the five-year-old animal may have been sick, or pregnant. Once he realized Tuesday he was seeing a little otter next to 841 and 841 had deflated to her previous size, he said, “It was a great feeling. It says that she’s doing well, and she had a successful pregnancy.”

Jess Fujii, sea otter program manager at the Aquarium, noted Wednesday that after 841 began interacting with surfers, experts hypothesized that her seemingly aggressive behavior toward humans may have resulted from pregnancy-related hormonal changes, but it could not be determined at the time whether the otter was pregnant. Gestation usually lasts six months, but can be as short as four, Fujii said.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife, which has been leading efforts to capture 841, said Wednesday it was seeking to confirm that the otter had given birth. “Because a sea otter believed to be sea otter 841 has recently been observed with a pup, biologists will continue to monitor her and assess her behavior,” said Steve Henry, a field supervisor for the agency. “There are currently no plans to attempt capture.”

The Aquarium, whose staff were involved in the capture effort, said Wednesday it did not have enough information to confirm whether 841 had given birth.

Surfer Jason Gingery of Santa Cruz, about to head into the waves Wednesday, said he had a run-in three weeks ago with an otter he believed to be 841. The animal snatched his daughter’s stand-up paddleboard paddle when she left it floating to dive into the water, and appeared to be playing, gnawing on the paddle and swimming away slowly, said Gingery, a property inspector, 53. He spent a half hour trying to get the $200 paddle back without antagonizing the animal. “I’m like, ‘Oh, gosh, I’ve got to be respectful, but I’ve got to get that paddle back,’” he said. In the end, the otter appeared to tire of the paddle, or get hungry, and dove beneath the surface, leaving the implement floating for Gingery and Lilianna, 15, to retrieve — with no damage to its tough carbon fiber.

Mulvaney had been joined Tuesday at the ocean by Mark Woodward, a local photographer who first documented 841’s wave-born larceny in mid-June, and whose imagery of 841 riding stolen surfboards has fascinated and delighted wildlife lovers around the world. Woodward has spent day after day photographing the animal, chronicling authorities’ many unsuccessful efforts to catch her, and posting photos on social media of scofflaws breaking federal law by deliberately approaching 841 too closely. “I started feeling pretty attached to her,” Woodward said Wednesday at Lighthouse Point. The pup, Woodward said, was about the smallest he has seen. “I started feeling a little emotional,” he said.

An otter appearing to be 841 with its youngster was floating just off Lighthouse Point on Wednesday morning and early afternoon, periodically diving while the pup floated. When both were on the surface, the pup bobbed nearby or nuzzled and rolled around on its parent.

Female sea otters typically start having young around two to four years of age, usually a single offspring at a time, Fujii said.

“Sea otter pups are very dependent on their mothers for care — this includes grooming the pup’s coat to keep it dry and warm, providing milk and prey once it’s old enough, providing protection, and teaching it the essential skills the pup will need to survive on its own,” Fujii said.

After Woodward’s photos highlighted Otter 841’s behavior this summer, federal and state wildlife authorities deemed the creature — whose powerful jaws smash shellfish — a possible threat to ocean-users’ safety, and embarked on a bid to remove her temporarily from her habitat. One day, they stretched a net more than 200 yards between two boats and tried to herd the otter into it, Woodward said. As with many other efforts, they failed.

“Every time they tried to catch her it became a circus,” Woodward said. “I saw them 10 or 12 times with nets and cages.”

Woodward on Wednesday fretted that renewed attention to 841 could lead to more of the harassment he witnessed over the summer. Fujii said a female sea otter with a pup may need to eat half its weight daily to survive and feed and care for its offspring. “If people get too close and cause disturbance, the otters are wasting energy when swimming away,” she said. “When this happens repeatedly it can lead to the mom or pup not surviving. It’s incredibly important for people to stay away from all sea otters, and especially those with pups.”

Surfer Damian Fahrenfort, coming out of the water at Steamer Lane on Wednesday, was quite familiar with 841, despite living in Southern California. The former pro surfer had seen two otters diving nearby while he waited for a wave, and he worried briefly he might get a nip on the foot. But, he said, “If they bite me, I probably shouldn’t be there.”

Fellow work-from-home types can attest: When it’s time for an important call or Zoom, that’s inevitably when either the dog starts to bark, the doorbell rings or the neighbor’s gardener fires up the leaf blower.

That last one does more than disrupt work meetings and napping babies, though. Operating a commercial, gas-powered leaf blower for one hour puts out the same level of smog-forming pollution as driving a car from Los Angeles to Denver, per the California Air Resources Board.

That’s why there are more than 300 restrictions on gas-powered lawn equipment across the country, according to data collected by the National Association of Landscape Professionals. Grist reporter Kate Yoder dug in on which cities, counties and states have passed limits on leaf blowers around the nation and what impact those bans are having.

Since talk of limits on gas-powered gardening equipment first emerged in California years ago, professional landscapers have raised concerns about how such bans might impact their businesses. Most are small. Many are run by non-White and immigrant entrepreneurs. And switching their fleet of gas-powered leaf blowers, mowers, weed trimmers, chainsaws, power washers and portable generators out for electric models won’t come cheap.

A newly proposed tax credit could help.

Under a bill recently introduced by Rep. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, landscape businesses could write off up to 40% of what they spent the prior year to buy emission-free gear, including plug-in or cordless tools plus any batteries or chargers that power those tools.

The goal, Correa told me, is to make sure that “good intentions” to clean up the air don’t disproportionately impact some of our most vulnerable neighbors.

“We should strive to make sure that since the benefits are for everyone equally, the cost should be shared by everyone in society, and do everything we can to make sure we don’t unduly burden any specific group or individuals,” Correa said.

Both landscape trade groups and environmental groups praised the bill. Britt Wood, CEO of the National Association of Landscape Professionals, called it “an important model for legislation supporting the business community while also protecting the environment.” And Athena Motavvef with Earthjustice said, “This bill will help businesses quickly and affordably transition to zero-emission equipment that will protect both workers and community members from dangerous contaminants.”

The tax credit does raise interesting questions. As our economy shifts from fossil fuels to renewable energy, what responsibility does the government have to smooth that transition? Can we, or should we, offer financial incentives for individuals and businesses alike to pivot? How much taxpayer money should be used to help make the jump? Should business size or profits, or personal income, be a factor when it comes to such rebates or tax credits?

If you have thoughts on these questions or other related ones, I’d love to hear them. Reach out at bstaggs@scng.com or ping me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

— By Brooke Staggs, environment reporter

 REGULATE

Boeing must step up water monitoring: Water quality officials voted to require Boeing to better monitor water discharged from the Santa Susana Field Lab, which is one of the nation’s most polluted areas due to rocket testing and a partial nuclear meltdown in the late 1950s. Our Olga Grigoryants reports two highly toxic chemicals have not been monitored at the site and potentially could leak into the Los Angeles River. …READ MORE…

Transparency coming: Among the many climate and environment bills Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law before this month’s deadline, the most high profile was a first-in-the-nation requirement for large corporations to publicly disclose their airborne pollutants on an annual basis. Our Jeff Horseman dug in on possible repercussions of the bill, including making public emissions such as diesel exhaust from trucks ferrying goods from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to Inland Empire warehouses. …READ MORE…

Newsom talks climate in China: Climate change was the first topic of discussion during Newsom’s week-long visit to China. While relations between the United States and China have grown increasingly contentious, Kanis Leung with the Associated Press reports that “climate remains one area where collaboration is seen as possible and necessary.”  …READ MORE…

Leaded aviation fuel a threat: The Biden administration recently declared emissions from airplanes running on leaded aviation fuel a threat to public health. It’s a first step, Jennifer A. Dlouhy | with Bloomberg reports, toward stamping out a major source of metal pollution linked to developmental delays, kidney disease and other health concerns. …READ MORE…

• The local picture: Lead spews from some Southern California airports, but cleaner fuel is coming.

 PROTECT

AAPI group convenes on climate: Climate change is “an urgent issue” for Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities, though advocates say these groups often are left out of discussions about solutions. So our Allyson Vergara reports that the AAPI Victory Alliance recently hosted its inaugural “Climate Justice Convening” in Koreatown to talk about ways to close those gaps. …READ MORE…

Roundup debate in O.C. city: A group of Laguna Beach residents have banded together to push their city to stop using Roundup on trails and neighborhood streets. Debate over the safety of a key ingredient in the weedkiller has raged for years, but Erika Ritchie reports that city officials say Roundup is part of a fire safety plan to keep vegetation at bay. …READ MORE…

Aliso Canyon questions linger: Eight years after the disastrous Aliso Canyon gas leak, Olga Grigoryants reports that residents are still questioning why government agencies and elected officials didn’t do more to protect their families during and after the devastating event. …READ MORE…

Scoop the poop: One Los Angeles equestrian facility is leading the charge in trying to convince other stable owners to help keep horse manure out of rivers and other water systems, while avoiding massive fines and potential closures along the way. Grigoryants is back with the scoop on the solution and the problems horse poop can cause. …READ MORE…

3 million honey bees dead: Over two days, co-owners of the San Diego Bee Sanctuary saw roughly 80 percent of their 64 hives — each with a single queen protected by 50,000 to 100,000 bees — get decimated by a mysterious plague. Now they’re waiting on answers as to what caused the die off, which are happening more frequently with bee colonies each year. ...READ MORE…

Get prepared: October is National Preparedness Month. With disasters such as wildfires and big storm events becoming more frequent and severe due to climate change, our visual journalist Kurt Snibbe mapped out disaster trends across California and how to be prepared when one comes. …READ MORE…

Get a roundup of the best climate and environment news delivered to your inbox each week by signing up for The Compost.

 TRANSPORT

Making public transportation more user friendly: A lack of public toilets at LA Metro train and bus stations has long been among the many problems plaguing public transportation in the greater Los Angeles area. But Steve Scauzillo reports that a new pilot program with a “newfangled portable potty system” aims to help and is going well so far. …READ MORE…

 ENERGIZE

The great underground power line debate: Riverside wants state regulators to decide if Southern California Edison must bury power lines for a long-awaited project to reduce wildfire risks. Given the need to rapidly boost the statewide grid to meet clean energy goals, one insider told me “all eyes” are on this decision. ...READ MORE…

 HYDRATE

Water bank opens for business: After three years of construction, water officials just announced completion of the first stage of a high desert groundwater storage project that they say will “significantly increase” Southern California’s water supply in the face of a “rapidly changing climate.” …READ MORE…

Colorado River situation improves: Disaster has been averted on the Colorado River for now, federal officials say, thanks to a wet winter and a multi-state plan to conserve water. The news from Denver Post colleague Elise Schmelzer comes after the river was on the verge of seeing failing hydroelectric systems and places like Southern California that depend on the river for water facing severe mandatory cuts. …READ MORE…

• Quote: “We’ll take the breather, but we recognize it’s just that — a breather.”

 REMEMBER

Honoring a climate hero: Cindy Montañez was a trailblazing San Fernando leader and environmental advocate who had a local elementary school named in her honor. She recently died at just 49, and our Linh Tat has the obituary. …READ MORE…

 CELEBRATE

Warehouse shot down: Climate, public health and social justice advocates are celebrating after a judge blocked a 396,000-square-foot warehouse project in Moreno Valley. Our Jeff Horseman has the tale. …READ MORE…

• Quote: “Our lungs are not for sale.”
• Context: In the past 20 years, the Inland Empire became ground zero for a logistics boom that’s transformed the region.

Rare sight: Whale watchers off Dana Point got a special treat on a recent trip, when a rare northern right whale dolphin without a dorsal fin stopped by. Erika Ritchie has the story and photos. …READ MORE…

 PITCH IN

Go green this Halloween: For this week’s tip on how Southern Californians can help the environment… One frightening topic that isn’t inspiring any horror movies or haunted mazes this Spooky Season is climate change. The good news is that there are lots of ways to make Halloween more sustainable without sacrificing the traditions that make this season so fun. So I rounded up some ideas for how to go green this Halloween, from pumpkins to costumes to trick or treating.

Thanks for reading, Composters! And don’t forget to sign up to get The Compost delivered to your inbox.

“An individual walking a small dog on a leash was injured when a young mountain lion attempted to attack the dog,” according to a statement from the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

“While intervening, the person received a scratch and puncture wound on their hand. National Park Service rangers provided first aid on scene. The dog was not injured. A second young mountain lion was also in the immediate area during the incident,” the statement said.

As a result, the Solstice Canyon area was ordered closed as a precaution until 8 a.m. Thursday.

The lion attack occurred on Tuesday morning, according to KTLA5.

“Wildlife biologists are in the area to assess the situation,” according to park officials.

Seth Riley, the wildlife branch chief for the U.S. National Park Service, told LAist that the person’s injury was “a scratch basically, just minor injuries.”

“He was able to grab the dog and keep the lion from capturing it,” Riley said.