Must-read recap: The New Lede's top stories

US Army base under fire for high water use in Arizona; algae bloom kills hundreds of sea lions off California; progress on overall industry emissions as oil and gas emissions rise.

Running dry — US army base under fire for high water use in drought-stricken Arizona

The San Pedro River, nestled in southeastern Arizona’s San Pedro Valley just north of the US-Mexico border, is one of the last undammed rivers in the Southwest and is considered a biodiversity hotspot. Lined with cattails, willows and cottonwoods, the marshy waterway shelters hundreds of diverse bird species, including many considered endangered and protected by federal law.

The area is also home to the Fort Huachuca US Army base, which has been heralded as an example of the military’s efforts to become more environmentally conscientious due to its use of solar power and other “green” initiatives.

Ten years ago, Fort Huachuca forged a plan to achieve “net-zero” by 2025. But today, that goal has been largely abandoned, and an expanding group of critics says the installation’s well-meaning conservation efforts are falling short, and the Army instead is posing a dire threat to a protected conservation zone as a result of the base’s rampant pumping of precious groundwater. (Read the rest of the story.)

Algae bloom kills hundreds of sea lions off California

Hundreds of sea lions off the coast of California have been poisoned this year amid a “highly unusual” algae bloom that has persisted in southern and central parts of the state into October.

Experts believe the blooms, which are becoming more common, may be linked to warming and changing ocean conditions. They harm sea life when algae produce a neurotoxic chemical that can be taken up by fish and crustaceans and absorbed by the larger animals that eat them.

Off the US west coast, the proliferations of algae, sometimes called “red tides”, usually peak in the late spring. For the last three years, however, harmful blooms have come on strong in the summer. This year, the bloom has persisted into autumn.

That is “highly unusual,” according to Clarissa Anderson, a researcher with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who is also the director of the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System, which tracks harmful algal blooms. “It’s catching us all off guard,” Anderson said. (Read the rest of the story.)

Progress seen on overall industry emissions, even as oil and gas emissions rise, EPA finds

US power plants, the largest stationary sources of greenhouse gases in the nation, continue to show reduced emissions but the good news from that sector comes as oil and gas emissions rise, according to new regulatory data.

Power plant emissions totaled about 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide last year, down 7% from 2022, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported. The agency collects data from over 8,000 industrial facilities for its Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, accounting for about half of total US emissions.

However, greenhouse gas emissions from petroleum and natural gas plants increased 1.4% in 2023 over 2022, and the 2023 tally was up 16.4% from 2016, the EPA said.

Nine coal-fired power plants were among the top ten greenhouse gas-emitting industrial facilities for 2023, along with a Texas-based ExxonMobil refinery.

The worst emitter – for the ninth year in a row – was the James H Miller power plant outside Birmingham, Alabama. (Read the rest of the story.)