Entergy Arkansas' 100 megawatt solar and storage plant in Searcy, Arkansas, covers about 800 acres (Robert Zullo/ States Newsroom).

Pennsylvania wants to remain a manufacturing powerhouse. But state leaders also want to reduce climate change-causing emissions from steel mills and other industrial facilities, while cutting back the toxic pollutants that cause health problems in nearby neighborhoods.

Thanks to a nearly $400 million investment from the federal government, the state is preparing a massive plan to help industrial operators upgrade to new technologies and switch to cleaner fuel sources.

“Pennsylvania was one of the birthplaces of the industrial revolution, and now we’ve been given the opportunity to lead the nation in the industrial decarbonization movement,” said Louie Krak, who is coordinating the plan for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Leaders in every state in the country have their own big plans. North Carolina and neighboring states are preparing to restore wetlands and conserve natural areas along the Atlantic coast. Iowa leaders intend to plant trees in neighborhoods that lack shade. Local governments in Texas plan to help residents install solar panels on their rooftops. And Utah is readying to purchase electric buses and reduce methane emissions at oil and gas operations.

All of these plans are backed by federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act, the climate law passed by Congress in 2022. But former President Donald Trump, who has called climate change measures a “scam” and vowed to rescind “unspent” funds under the law, could throw much of that work into chaos if he retakes the White House.

Legal experts say Trump couldn’t outright cancel the law without an act of Congress. But climate leaders say a Trump administration could create extra barriers for grant awards, slow the approval of tax credits and delay loan requests. If the federal support becomes unreliable, projects could lose financing from the private sector and cease to be viable.

“Even if the money is technically safe, we would definitely expect to see agencies [in a Trump administration] dragging their feet,” said Rachel Jacobson, lead researcher of state climate policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank.

Federal agencies have already announced plans to award $63 billion — mostly in the form of grants — to states, nonprofits and other entities for a host of projects to fight climate change, according to Atlas Public Policy, a climate-focused research group. Many Republican-led states have, for the first time, drafted plans to fight climate change in order to compete for the money.

In addition, the feds are rolling out billions more in loans and tax credits aimed at similar projects. States say the mix of funding sources and financial incentives that will soon be available could supercharge efforts to fight climate change and create green jobs.

Many states whose projects have been approved say they’re urging the feds to issue their funding before the election.

“There’s a risk that an incoming administration could cancel our agreement,” said Krak, adding that Pennsylvania is hoping to finalize its funding award this fall.

Another $30 billion from the law is still up for grabs, much of it aimed at reducing emissions in the agricultural sector. And agencies have just begun offering loans and tax credits to provide hundreds of billions more in financing.

“So many states have climate plans for the first time [because of the federal law],” said Ava Gallo, climate and energy program manager with the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, a collaborative forum for state lawmakers. “Even states that weren’t supportive of the Inflation Reduction Act are certainly touting these projects.”

State plans

In July, Utah learned that it would be receiving nearly $75 million to carry out its climate plan. The program will pay for electric school and transit buses, help residents purchase electric vehicles and install equipment to reduce methane emissions at oil and gas operations, among many other components.

By 2050, the investments are expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1.4 million metric tons, said Glade Sowards, who is coordinating the plan for the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. Sowards said the plan was also designed to reduce pollution that harms public health.

North Carolina is focused on protecting natural areas. The state filed a joint plan with Maryland, South Carolina and Virginia that is set to receive $421 million in federal funding. The coalition plans to conserve and restore more than 200,000 acres in coastal areas in the four states. While the natural lands are valuable for pulling carbon from the air, the funding will also help to expand state parks and protect residents from flooding.

Like many of the state projects supported through the climate law, the four-state plan has been announced as a recipient but the funding agreement is still being finalized. State leaders are urging the feds to complete that this fall.

“We want to get this done quickly for two reasons: one, so we can get the work underway, but two, to make sure that the money will be there [before a new administration could threaten it],” said Reid Wilson, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The federal law also will pay for trees in urban areas, where they can reduce the dangerous “heat island” effect and limit stormwater runoff and air pollution. Iowa earned a pair of grants totaling more than $5 million to increase tree canopy in its cities.

“We’ve never had this level of funding before,” said Emma Hanigan, urban forestry coordinator with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. “We have a really low canopy cover, one of the lowest in the nation.”

Another nationwide program is set to offer funding in all 50 states to help residents put solar panels on their rooftops or buy into community solar operations. In Texas, a coalition of municipalities and nonprofits, led by Harris County (which includes Houston), earned a nearly $250 million award to carry out that work.

The program will largely focus on disadvantaged communities, with a requirement that solar projects reduce participants’ energy bills by at least 20%. Leaders in Texas expect the investment to reach about 28,000 households.

States are also tasked with distributing rebates to help residents with their home energy needs. Wisconsin was the first state to bring its rebate program online, with $149 million in funding. Residents can receive up to $10,000 to improve insulation, upgrade appliances or install electric heat pumps. Over time, they will see greater savings in the form of lower energy bills.

“It’s nice [for a contractor] to be able to sit at the kitchen table and say, ‘You’re getting $3,000 of work here, but the state is paying $2,800,’” said Joe Pater, director of the Office of Energy Innovation with the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin.

Three other states (Arizona, New Mexico and New York) have rebate programs up and running, and others are finalizing applications. Indiana is among the many states awaiting federal approval to launch its program. The state expects to offer $182 million in rebates starting in early 2025. Greg Cook, communications manager with the Indiana Office of Energy Development, said the state is hoping to execute its plan regardless of the election outcome.

The climate law also has boosted “green banks,” which are state or nonprofit-run institutions that finance climate-friendly projects. The nonprofit Coalition for Green Capital received $5 billion of the federal money, which it will use to build a network that includes a green bank in each state, said Reed Hundt, the group’s CEO.

Michigan Saves, a nonprofit bank, expects to receive $95 million as a sub-award from the coalition. Chanell Scott Contreras, the president and CEO of Michigan Saves, said the “unprecedented” funding will enable the bank to expand its work, which includes helping low-income residents weatherize their homes and financing electric vehicle chargers and solar installations.

Loans and tax credits

The grants given out to states and other entities are just the start. The climate law supersized a federal loan program for clean energy projects, bringing its lending authority to $400 billion. And a new mechanism known as elective pay will now allow states, cities and nonprofits to receive the clean energy tax credits that have long been available to the private sector.

Climate advocates say many of the plans that states are setting in motion rely on the financing and tax rebates — components of the law that are most vulnerable to political interference.

“If an administration wanted to completely thwart the ability of [the Department of Energy] to make those loans, they could do so,” said Annabelle Rosser, a policy analyst with Atlas Public Policy, which has been tracking the rollout of the climate law. “That could be cut off at the knees.”

Meanwhile, many states are relying on the new tax credit to support plans such as electrifying state vehicle fleets and installing solar panels on public schools. In Washington state, for instance, the Office of Financial Management is coordinating a governmentwide effort to ensure state agencies use elective pay to bolster their climate work.

But climate advocates fear that an Internal Revenue Service led by Trump appointees could stall that work.

“There’s a lot of concern about what [Trump] would do with IRS staffing to limit the ability for them to get the refund checks out,” said Jillian Blanchard, director of the climate change and environmental justice program with Lawyers for Good Government, a nonprofit focused on human rights. Such delays could “chill hundreds of thousands of projects,” she said.

“I’m not sure he knows that red states are counting on this money too.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

An Amazon truck makes deliveries in Wheeling, Ill., earlier this year. Some states have passed or considered measures that would impose a fee on retail deliveries in order to provide funding for road maintenance (Nam Y. Huh/The Associated Press).

For decades, states have relied on gas taxes to provide much of the money to maintain roads and bridges. But as cars become more fuel efficient, and some Americans switch to electric vehicles, state leaders say the gas tax won’t pay the bills for much longer.

At the same time, many cities have seen their streets crowded with delivery trucks from Amazon and other companies, as consumers increasingly opt to have products delivered to their homes. In a few states, lawmakers think fees on those deliveries could be part of their road-funding solution.

“If you’re going to be creating wear and tear on our roads, you should help pay to maintain them,” said Colorado state Rep. Cathy Kipp, a Democrat who chairs the Energy and Environment Committee.

In July 2022, Colorado became the first state with a retail delivery fee, a charge on all vehicle deliveries to consumers within the state. The fee, which currently stands at 29 cents per delivery, provides funding for highways, bridges, tunnels, electric vehicle charging stations and projects to reduce air pollution and to electrify vehicle fleets and transit systems. It has brought in more than $160 million.

Colorado leaders have had to simplify the law to help businesses comply with it, but they say it’s largely been a success story. Minnesota enacted its own retail delivery fee in 2023, and lawmakers in New York and Illinois have proposed similar measures. Meanwhile, legislators and transportation officials in several other states have commissioned studies to consider the concept.

Some retailers and Republican lawmakers have argued that the fee hurts consumers, and many businesses in Colorado initially had trouble complying with the law.

“The 27-cent delivery fee is not trivial, its effects are not imperceptible, and it greatly affects our citizens — especially those who are already struggling to pay the bills and provide for their families,” Republican state Rep. Rose Pugliese, the House minority leader, wrote in a Colorado Springs Gazette guest column several months after the law was enacted.

But backers of the fee say they see growing interest across the country, especially as delivery trucks become ubiquitous in many neighborhoods.

‘Future-proofing’ transportation funding

State law in Colorado limits the ways in which lawmakers can expand taxes. With gas tax revenues dwindling, legislators didn’t have an obvious solution to pay for roads. They eventually settled on the retail delivery fee, which is not characterized as a tax.

Initially, the program was a struggle for many businesses, due to a requirement that they detail the fee separately on each receipt.

“For our medium and small businesses, it was a real complicated thing and very burdensome for them to have to reprogram their software with a whole extra line item,” Kipp said.

Last year, Kipp joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers to amend the program. They rescinded the requirement that businesses itemize the fee on each receipt and allowed companies to cover the fee themselves rather than breaking it out on each order. They also exempted retailers with less than $500,000 in sales.

Since the fix was adopted, Kipp said she has stopped hearing complaints about the program. Chris Howes, president of the Colorado Retail Council, said he too has not heard any recent gripes.

“We’ve got it straightened out by now,” he said. “People have accepted it and moved on.”

Amazon did not grant a Stateline interview request, and the National Retail Federation deferred questions to state chapters. Chamber of Progress, a tech industry advocacy group, did not arrange an interview by publication time.

Last year, lawmakers in Minnesota enacted their own retail delivery fee, a 50-cent charge on purchases of more than $100. Lawmakers heard from local governments that they were struggling to maintain their roads and badly needed state aid to make up the gap.

“This is trying to future-proof our transportation funding,” said Democratic state Rep. Erin Koegel, who sponsored the bill. “We keep getting performance grades from civil engineers saying we’re at a C- or D for our infrastructure. We needed to think about ways to get more revenue in the system.”

Koegel said the measure was a compromise. Her initial draft, which did not have a $100 threshold for purchases, was intended to be a deterrent, much like cigarette taxes. She said delivery trucks are increasing congestion in many cities and damaging streets that weren’t built to support large vehicles. However, lawmakers ultimately decided to limit the fee to more expensive purchases in order to protect lower-income consumers.

Minnesota’s fee is projected to generate $59 million in its first fiscal year. The funding will be distributed to cities, counties and towns to help with their road-funding needs.

Traffic throughout the day

Cities and counties in Washington state also have asked for help, and some local leaders have asked state lawmakers to consider a retail delivery fee — or to authorize cities to collect one. State lawmakers commissioned an analysis, published last month, looking at the potential for such a program. The report found that a fee could generate $45 million to $112 million in revenue in 2026, depending on which businesses and orders were covered.

“We’re now seeing that there’s traffic on our system throughout the day, and the growth of these delivery services is a part of that,” said Democratic state Sen. Marko Liias, who chairs the Transportation Committee. “We’ve had a history in transportation of user-based fees. This feels like a mechanism that could help in that regard.”

Liias emphasized that some version of the fee is likely to be a big topic of discussion in the next legislative session. He said he’s already heard strong arguments on both sides of the issue.

In some areas, the rise in retail deliveries has put the greatest burden on the infrastructure surrounding shipping facilities. Illinois’ CenterPoint Intermodal Center, the nation’s largest inland port, connects interstate trucking, railway lines and Mississippi River barges.

“There really needs to be a shift in the tax structure, since many of these facilities are not generating the local sales tax you’d get at a brick and mortar,” said Democratic state Sen. Rachel Ventura, whose district includes the CenterPoint facility. “We have a lot of traffic going in and out, and the environmental burden and road repairs and the tax burden fall locally.”

Ventura has drafted a bill that would allow communities to assess fees on intermodal facilities — locations that transfer products from one type of transportation to another. Local governments that opted in would be able to spend the funds on roads within five miles of the facilities. The fee, which would be based on the weight of each shipment, is projected to generate $33 million to $68 million per year.

The bill has not passed out of committee, and Ventura said lawmakers are still discussing the path forward amid opposition from the trucking industry.

In New York, a Democratic bill to impose a 25-cent fee on deliveries within New York City has been introduced but remains in committee. Meanwhile, state agencies in Nevada and Ohio have commissioned studies examining the feasibility of retail delivery fees. Those reports have not yet led to legislative action.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

Climate-induced weather disasters include record wildfires in the West, record-setting heat waves and droughts, and aggressive hurricanes. Here, smoke plumes and hurricane clouds are visible at once (photo courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory).

In the coming years, climate change could force Americans from their homes, not just by raising sea levels, worsening wildfires and causing floods — but also by putting insurance coverage out of reach.

In places including California, Florida and Louisiana, some homeowners are finding it nearly impossible to find an insurance company that will cover their property. Others have seen their premiums climb so high that they can no longer pay. Experts say the trend is spreading throughout the country as natural disasters increase.

Most mortgage lenders require homeowners to maintain insurance. Without access to coverage, millions of Americans could find themselves forced to reconsider where they live. Consumer advocates say long-overdue conversations about development in areas prone to natural disasters are being driven by property insurers, not governments.

“Insurance companies have basically become our land-use officials,” said Doug Heller, director of insurance with the Consumer Federation of America, a research and advocacy nonprofit. “In 2023, the industry suddenly seemed to wake up and say, ‘There’s climate change, forget all those times we’ve nodded our head yes and told you that you can live there.’”

As the crisis escalates, state leaders are desperately trying to convince insurance companies to stick around. States are offering them more flexibility to raise premiums or drop certain homes from coverage, fast-tracking rate revisions and making it harder for residents to sue their insurance company.

Meanwhile, a flood of new policyholders are joining state-backed insurance “plans of last resort,” leaving states to assume more of the risk on behalf of residents who can’t find coverage in the private sector.

Industry leaders note that insurance companies have been hammered by heavy payouts — last year, 28 separate U.S. natural disasters caused at least $1 billion each in damage, according to federal figures — and say they simply can’t afford to provide coverage in the areas that face the highest risk.

Disaster costs are soaring. In the last five years, there have been 102 disaster events in the United States that caused at least $1 billion in damage. In the entire decade of the 1990s, there were 57 billion-dollar events (adjusted for inflation), and in the 1980s there were 33.

Natural disasters are increasing at the same time risk-prone areas are becoming ever more populated, and as property values are climbing. The price of repairs and replacement have skyrocketed due to inflation, workforce and supply chain issues. Insurers say costs also have been driven by an uptick in litigation and fraud.

“We’re experiencing record-breaking losses as it relates to natural disasters,” said Adam Shores, senior vice president for state government relations with the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, an industry group. “We want to be there, but when the math doesn’t work for a company, they have to make those decisions.”

While the insurance crisis is most acute in certain coastal states, climate experts say every region will face similar challenges, especially as severe storms batter the middle of the country. While some states have made marginal gains in stabilizing the insurance market, some experts say that progress may be short-lived.

“Insurers are the climate change canary in the coal mine,” said Dave Jones, the former insurance commissioner in California and director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment. “While these policy and regulatory interventions might help in the short run, they’re likely to be overwhelmed by the increasing risk and loss.”

‘The perfect storm’

In some hard-hit states, policymakers have focused on giving insurance companies more flexibility to adjust their rates and coverage options.

Four hurricanes walloped Louisiana in 2020 and 2021, causing $23 billion in insured losses. Twelve insurance companies became insolvent and dozens left the state. Residents in southern Louisiana especially have struggled to find coverage, and some have moved elsewhere because they couldn’t afford their premiums.

“It’s the perfect storm,” said Louisiana state Rep. Gabe Firment, a Republican. “We just do not have companies willing to write business in Louisiana right now, and you can’t blame them.”

Firment sponsored a measure, enacted this year, repealing a state rule that had blocked companies from dropping long-standing customers. Those dropped can join a state-run plan. Lawmakers hope that — given the ability to cancel the highest-risk policies — insurance companies will remain in the state and avoid massive rate hikes on their remaining customers.

Legislators passed a suite of other laws aimed at the crisis, speeding up the process for insurers to adjust their rates, extending a grant program to help residents fortify their homes and giving companies more time to pay out claims. Firment said the changes are designed to attract more companies back to the state, “but if we get two or three hurricanes this year, all bets are off.”

In California, many major insurers have canceled policies or stopped accepting new applications due to wildfire risk. Regulators there have proposed a rule that would allow companies to incorporate climate change projections into the models they use to set their rates.

“Insurers are not going to continue to write in every market if they can’t price accurately,” said Mark Friedlander, director of corporate communications with the Insurance Information Institute, an industry-backed research group.

Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has put forth a measure that would speed up regulators’ approval of the rate revisions proposed by insurance companies. While seeking to give insurers more flexibility on rates, California leaders also have sought to protect residents by establishing a one-year moratorium on policy cancellations in disaster areas following a wildfire.

Officials at the state Department of Insurance did not respond to Stateline interview requests.

Homeowners’ insurance rates in Texas spiked 23% last year, twice the national average. The state has endured a myriad of disasters in recent years, but consumer advocates fear insurers are weaponizing climate change to jack up rates and demand looser regulations.

“[Insurance companies] are putting a gun to our heads, telling us, ‘Do it our way or we’ll pull up stakes,’” said Ware Wendell, executive director of Texas Watch, a nonprofit advocacy group. “They’re going to cherry-pick the country and only insure parts of the country that have less climate risk.”

The Texas Department of Insurance did not grant a Stateline interview request.

‘Last resort’

In several states, homeowners who can’t find private coverage are joining state-run plans. Originally intended to be a last-ditch option, because they generally offer limited coverage, these plans are seeing more and more residents signing up.

Florida has seen more than 1 million residents join the plan offered by the state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corporation. The plan, which is meant to be a “last resort” option, now stands as the largest in the state.

Insurance rates in Florida have climbed to four times the national average, following hurricanes Ian and Nicole in 2022. The state also has seen an uptick in claims lawsuits that insurance companies characterize as legal abuse.

Legislators changed state law in 2022 to disincentivize such lawsuits, ending homeowners’ ability to collect attorneys fees from insurers in claims disputes. State regulators say insurance rates have stabilized in 2024, and new companies are joining the market. The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation did not grant an interview request.

But some lawmakers say state leaders are eager to help insurance companies while ignoring the underlying issue of climate change.

“Stabilization is important, but [premiums] have stabilized at high rates,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat. “Floridians can’t afford Florida anymore, and if we’re not taking climate change seriously, then we’re missing the point.”

Eskamani called for leaders to change land-use policies to limit development in high-risk areas.

Even as some Florida homeowners are now shifting from the state-run plan back to the private market, industry experts say the nationwide surge in state-backed policies is troubling. If such plans exhaust their reserves, states impose an assessment on either all insurance companies or all individual policyholders — known in Florida as the “hurricane tax.”

Jones, the former California insurance commissioner, noted that insurers there are worried that growing wildfire risk could force them to bail out the state plan. Nearly 400,000 Californians rely on the state plan for insurance, and state officials have warned that a catastrophic event could wipe out its reserves.

While Californians struggle to find insurance on the private market, Jones called out the insurers that are dropping policies even as they retain financial ties to fossil fuel companies.

“Why are insurers investing in and writing insurance for the very industry that’s making it increasingly challenging for them to write insurance in certain parts of the country?” he said.

In Colorado, lawmakers voted last year to create a state-backed insurance plan like those in more than 30 other states. State Sen. Dylan Roberts, the Democrat who sponsored the bill, said he heard from constituents who were getting dropped by their insurers following the Marshall Fire that swept through Boulder County in 2021.

“We’re going to have more and more Coloradoans every year who are unable to find insurance for their property on the private market,” he said. “To have an insurer of last resort is something we hope isn’t used widely, but it’s something we need to have.”

Some consumer advocates believe states will have to get more involved. Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, a nonprofit that advocates for insurance customers, said governments face the same difficult risk calculations as private companies but are tax-exempt and don’t face the same pressures to return high profit margins to shareholders.

“Publicly supported insurance programs are here to stay,” she said. “It behooves us to build them as smart as we can.”

In Washington state, regulators say they have only a few hundred policies on the state-backed plan, a sign that residents can still access coverage on the private market. David Forte, senior property and casualty policy adviser with the Office of the Insurance Commissioner, said the agency has added actuarial staff to speed up insurers’ rate revision approvals.

He also credited the work of state leaders who have invested millions to reduce wildfire risk. But he cited a 2022 wildfire that nearly swept through the town of Index, before shifting winds changed its direction.

“If that had happened, I think our property market would be different,” he said. “Are we just one bad event away? Probably.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

To date, 11 states have set limits for PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, in drinking water (Getty Images).

In recent years, Michigan has spent tens of millions of dollars to limit residents’ exposure to the harmful “forever chemicals” called PFAS. And some cities there have spent millions of their own to filter contaminated drinking water or connect to new, less-polluted sources.

“We’ve made significant investments to get up to speed,” said Abigail Hendershott, executive director of the Michigan PFAS Action Response Team, which serves as a coordinating group for the state’s testing, cleanup and public education efforts. “There’s still a good chunk of the country that hasn’t taken on anything.”

That’s about to change.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued new standards last month for PFAS levels in drinking water, giving water systems three years to conduct testing, and another two years to install treatment systems if contaminants are detected. State officials and utilities say it’s going to be difficult and costly to meet the requirements.

“This is going to take a lot more investment at the state level,” said Alan Roberson, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, a group that convenes leaders in state health and environmental agencies. “It creates a big workload for everybody.”

PFAS chemicals are widespread, found in a host of everyday products and industrial uses, and they don’t break down naturally, meaning they stay in human bodies and the environment indefinitely. Exposure has been shown to increase the risk of cancer, decrease fertility, cause metabolic disorders and damage the immune system.

To date, 11 states have set limits for PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, in drinking water. Several others have pending rules or levels that require public notice. While the federal rule builds on those efforts, it also sets limits that are stricter than the state-issued rules.

“We really have looked to the states as leaders in setting standards and doing some of the foundational science,” said Zach Schafer, director of policy and special projects for the EPA’s Office of Water. “The state agencies are the ones who will be playing the point role [in implementing the national rule].”

Schafer said the agency estimates that 6% to 10% of water systems nationwide will need to take steps to reduce PFAS contamination, at a cost averaging $1.5 billion per year over an 80-year span.

Public health advocates say the EPA’s rule is an important step to ensure all Americans have access to safe water. They say state actions show that such efforts can work.

But some state regulators and water suppliers — even in states that already have their own rules — say the strict thresholds and timelines imposed by the feds will be difficult for many utilities to achieve. While the Biden administration has dedicated billions in funding to help clean up water supplies, experts say the costs will far exceed the available money.

“It’s going to have a significant impact nationally on water rates and affordability of water,” said Chris Moody, regulatory technical manager with the American Water Works Association, a group that includes more than 4,000 utilities.

An estimate, conducted on behalf of the association, pegs the national cost of cleaning up contaminated water at nearly $4 billion each year. The report found that some households could face thousands of dollars in increased rates to cover the costs of treatment.

‘There’s a lot of concern’

New Jersey in 2018 became the first state to issue standards for PFAS in drinking water. While the state’s regulations given New Jersey a head start, officials say they still have a difficult task ahead to meet the stricter thresholds.

“When we bring in the EPA number, the number of noncompliant systems goes up dramatically,” said Shawn LaTourette, the state’s commissioner of environmental protection. “There’s a lot of concern about cost and implementation.”

LaTourette said state leaders are working to analyze which water systems may fall out of compliance when the federal thresholds take effect. And he’s calling on lawmakers to provide more money to communities that can’t afford the upgrades.

In Washington state, utilities have begun testing for PFAS under state standards passed by regulators in 2021. Officials say that roughly 2% of the water systems tested so far aren’t in compliance, but that number would jump to 10% when factoring in the stricter federal limits. State leaders say they’ll be able to grandfather in the data they’ve been collecting to meet EPA’s testing requirements.

The agency may ask state lawmakers for a “substantial” increase in staffing to implement the new rules, said Mike Means, capacity development and policy manager with the Washington State Department of Health.

Michigan has had its drinking water standards for PFAS since 2020. Hendershott said state officials are well prepared to incorporate the EPA’s thresholds. But the strict new limits could quadruple the number of water systems that fall out of compliance.

Sarah Doll, national director of Safer States, an alliance of environmental health groups focused on toxic chemicals, said state efforts were key to bringing about the federal rule.

“They created the urgency for the feds to bring these standards,” she said. “States that already have regulatory standards absolutely are in a better position.”

‘It’s very expensive’

While many states have not enacted their own standards, some have conducted testing or taken other steps to address residents’ exposure.

Missouri has been testing water systems for PFAS for more than a decade and created maps to notify residents of potential exposure. Of the 400 systems it’s sampled, 11 may have trouble complying with the EPA rule, said Eric Medlock, an environmental specialist with the state Department of Natural Resources. The agency aims to bring on a chemist and laboratory equipment to conduct more testing in-house.

Medlock expressed concern that the federal limits are so strict that they’re near the threshold of what can be detected.

“When you get down to these really low detection levels that are right at the regulatory limit, that poses a problem,” he said. “We’re going to have to enforce and regulate what EPA proposed. It is going to be an issue.”

Medlock and others noted that states will face longer-term issues with the storage of the waste products filtered from the water,  which carry their own PFAS contamination risk.

The infrastructure bill passed by Congress in 2021 includes $5 billion over five years to help communities treat PFAS and other emerging contaminants.

More funding for cleanup may come from state lawsuits filed against chemical manufacturers. Thirty attorneys general have filed litigation against polluters, and Minnesota settled its case against 3M Company for $850 million. But leaders say such settlements aren’t a predictable funding source.

In addition to the upfront cost of installing treatment systems, utilities face ongoing expenses, such as replacing filters and disposing of waste, that are less likely to benefit from federal grants and loans. Meanwhile, some water system leaders say the federal compliance timelines may not be long enough.

“It takes time to design and build a major capital project,” said Erica Brown, chief policy and strategy officer for the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, a policy group that advocates for public water utilities. “It’s not one of those things that you say, ‘You have to do this, and next year,’ and you can just turn it on.”

And some officials fear the drinking water limits could lead to more state regulations on wastewater plants and other entities whose discharges may affect drinking water sources.

“It seems like it’s going to be problematic, because [treatment] is very expensive,” said Sharon Green, manager of legislative and regulatory programs with the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, an agency whose members operate 11 wastewater treatment plants.

Both state regulators and regulated utilities say state leaders need a broader approach to the PFAS problem than just treating the water that comes out of the tap. Officials need to stop pollution at the source, regulate industrial operations and limit products that contain the chemicals.

“If we keep it out of the river in the first place, … [the utility] doesn’t have to spend millions of dollars for treatment,” said Jean Zhuang, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, an advocacy group focused on the South.

While Southern states have not adopted drinking water standards for PFAS, Zhuang said South Carolina’s requirement that polluters disclose their discharges of PFAS is a good model to begin cutting off contamination sources.

As states face down the expenses of fixing the PFAS problem, some advocates also want them to remember the public health costs of inaction.

“People will ultimately be consuming less of these chemicals and getting sick less often,” said Melanie Benesh, vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, a public health advocacy nonprofit.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

Climate-induced weather disasters include record wildfires in the West, record-setting heat waves and droughts, and aggressive hurricanes. Here, smoke plumes and hurricane clouds are visible at once (photo courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory).

After years of legal appeals and delays, some oil companies are set to stand trial in lawsuits brought by state and local governments over the damages caused by climate change.

Meanwhile, dozens more governments large and small have brought new claims against the fossil fuel industry as those initial cases, filed up to a half-dozen years ago, inch closer to the courtroom.

“It’s all building toward more cases in more places using more legal theories to hold these companies accountable,” said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, a nonprofit that offers legal and communication support to communities suing oil companies.

Wiles’ group has tracked 32 cases filed by state attorneys general, cities, counties and tribal nations against companies including Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell. The lawsuits cite extensive news reporting — including investigations by the Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News — showing oil companies’ own research projected the dangers of climate change decades ago, even as the industry tried to undermine scientific consensus about the crisis.

Those practices, the claims argue, violate a variety of laws including consumer protection, public nuisance, failure to warn, fraud and racketeering. Some of the lawsuits seek to force oil companies to help pay for the damages caused by climate change. Others aim to impose penalties for the use of deceptive business practices. Some want to compel the companies to fund a corrective education campaign about the climate threats they once downplayed.

Given the massive price tag of climate disasters and governments’ adaptation costs, experts say the lawsuits could put the oil industry on the hook for many billions of dollars.

Oil companies have long sought to move such cases to federal court, where they believe national regulations such as the Clean Air Act could supersede local governments’ claims against them. But a string of circuit court and U.S. Supreme Court decisions have ruled that the cases alleging violations of state laws belong in state court, finally clearing the way for jury trials.

Legal experts on both sides say there is a long way to go — perhaps decades — before there is any sort of resolution. But environmental advocates say the first trials could lead to a “tidal wave” of new cases, similar to the nationwide push that forced tobacco companies to pay billions under a settlement reached in the 1990s.

Oil industry backers argue that governments themselves have promoted the use of fossil fuels, and that attempts to hold companies accountable for climate change will hurt consumers.

“We don’t have an economy without oil,” said Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, a California-based think tank that advocates for free market principles and is supported in part by oil industry-affiliated groups.

“Consumers are aware of global climate change and continue to use oil,” he said. “[The lawsuits] are an underhanded way of the states throwing on carbon taxes without having to take responsibility for it.”

First trials

In the past year, the Supreme Court has issued three denials covering eight cases, rejecting oil companies’ attempts to move them to federal court. The decisions, which uphold lower court rulings, will finally allow cases to proceed in state court, after years of delays over the “venue” question.

Two of those lawsuits, filed by the state of Massachusetts and the city of Honolulu, have moved past oil companies’ motions for dismissal and reached the pretrial discovery phase, when both sides exchange information about evidence they could present in court.

Wiles said the Massachusetts case against Exxon Mobil could reach trial as soon as next year. When the case was filed in 2019, then-Attorney General Maura Healey, now the Democratic governor, said the monetary damages could reach “untold amounts.”

If the Massachusetts suit wins a ruling that fossil fuel companies can be held liable for climate damages, it would prompt a “flood” of cases, Wiles said, as other attorneys general seek money for their states.

The Massachusetts attorney general’s office declined an interview request. None of the industry organizations facing lawsuits — Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, Sunoco, Suncor, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Koch Industries and the American Petroleum Institute — would grant an interview.

While all eyes are on the Massachusetts case, which appears on track to be the first climate trial, others are close behind. Boulder County, Colorado, also received Supreme Court validation last year that its lawsuit, filed in 2018, belongs in state court. Oil companies have now filed a motion to dismiss. Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett said the move is a delay tactic used by the industry in nearly every climate case. If the claim is not dismissed, the county expects its case to move into the discovery phase later this year.

“We already have documentation that the companies involved in the suit knew about the effects of climate change as much as 50 years ago,” Brockett said. “We expect discovery to uncover a great deal more of that evidence. They knew about the damage that their products were causing, so they deserve to pay their fair share.”

Boulder County, he said, is spending millions to prepare for a climate future that is projected to include wildfires, droughts, floods and intense storm events. The lawsuit seeks to force oil companies to pay for the past and future damages caused by climate change.

Attorneys for the oil companies have argued in court filings that Boulder is attempting to use state law to tackle global climate change.

“Plaintiffs’ claims are not limited to harms allegedly caused by fossil fuels extracted, marketed, sold, or used in Colorado,” they wrote. “Instead, Plaintiffs attempt to use this state’s tort law to control the worldwide activity of companies that play a crucial role in virtually every sector of the global economy.”

The most recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, issued in January, denied attempts to move the state of Minnesota’s case, which was filed in 2020, to federal court.

“The fact that this whole avenue of delay and distraction has been shut down is huge,” said Leigh Currie, director of strategic litigation with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. Currie helped write and litigate the lawsuit in her previous role with the state attorney general’s office. “We can go forward and actually answer some of the questions that these lawsuits pose.”

Minnesota is experiencing extreme weather, droughts, floods and wildfire smoke as a result of climate change, Currie said. While the state’s lawsuit does not directly seek damages for those harms, it attempts to compel the oil companies to surrender the profits they made as a result of unlawful behavior.

In their petition before the Supreme Court, the oil companies facing the Minnesota lawsuit argued that without federal review, “climate-change cases will continue to proliferate in state courts, resulting in the application of the laws of fifty states to climate change-related disputes, in conflict with the national-security, economic, and energy policies of the United States.”

‘A war of attrition’

The cases illustrate the arduous legal path just to get before a jury.

“[Oil companies] have an open checkbook, and they’re making record profits,” said Pat Parenteau, an emeritus professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School, who also serves in an informal advisory group that supports some of the governments’ cases. “The real test for the plaintiffs is whether they can compete and fight tooth and nail for years. It’s a war of attrition. That’s what Exxon’s counting on.”

The steep cost of taking on the oil industry has kept some states from joining the fray. But climate advocates say they’re seeing increasing momentum after the Supreme Court wins. Chicago filed a lawsuit this year. Last September, California became the largest government to file a lawsuit, seeking to force oil companies to pay into a fund that would help pay for climate adaptation efforts. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office told Politico that the earlier victories gave California confidence that its case would be heard in state court.

“Having California in the mix could meaningfully alter the course of climate litigation,” said Hannah Wiseman, a professor of law at Penn State University’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. “They have the resources for this type of litigation that other states have been working to amass.”

Neither Newsom’s office nor Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office granted interview requests.

New York City, which filed its own lawsuit in 2021, is among the cases to cite laws that penalize deceptive advertising. New York argues “greenwashing” ads from oil companies portray them as climate leaders even as they continue to increase fossil fuel production.

“Part of the relief we are seeking is to stop the defendants from making false and misleading statements to New York City consumers,” said Hilary Meltzer, chief of the city’s environmental law division. The suit also seeks financial penalties.

Meanwhile, a pair of tribal nations in Washington state filed lawsuits late last year, citing the costs of moving to higher ground as rising sea levels threaten their communities. Environmental advocates say the entry of tribes — many of which are facing the worst effects of climate change — is a welcome development in the legal fight.

The Washington cases, brought by the Makah and Shoalwater Bay tribes, are among those seeking damages for specific harms. Another, filed by Multnomah County, Oregon, cites the deadly 2021 “heat dome” event that brought record temperatures to the region. And a pair of cases brought by Puerto Rico municipalities seek damages for the 2017 hurricane season.

So far, the climate cases have been brought by governments with Democratic leaders, as Republican officials remain largely hostile to climate action and more friendly to fossil fuel interests. Advocates say that political dynamic means such lawsuits will likely be limited to blue states for the near future. But they noted that red states are also in the path of climate disasters.

“Money talks,” said Wiles, with the climate group. “If New Jersey has a multibillion-dollar decision against Big Oil, why wouldn’t North Carolina say, ‘Damn!’?”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year stripped federal protection from millions of acres of wetlands that had been covered under the Clean Water Act — leaving their fate up to the states (Rob Levine/Minnesota Reformer).

For 200 miles, the Wabash River forms the border between Illinois and Indiana as it meanders south to the Ohio River.

On the Illinois side, lawmakers are scrambling to pass a bill that would protect wetlands from development and pollution, in order to safeguard water quality and limit flooding. But in Indiana, state policymakers hastily passed a law earlier this year to roll back wetlands regulations, at the urging of developers and farm groups who said such rules were overly burdensome.

That means the water that flows into the Wabash River from the west may soon be governed by very different standards than its watershed on the eastern side.

The divide is the result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that stripped federal protection from millions of acres of wetlands that had been covered under the Clean Water Act — leaving their fate up to the states.

“It creates a checkered landscape in terms of water quality,” said Marla Stelk, executive director of the National Association of Wetland Managers, a nonprofit group that represents state and tribal regulators. “Even if your state is doing all the right things, you could be downstream of a state that doesn’t have wetlands protections.”

In the first full legislative sessions since the ruling came down, lawmakers in some blue states, including Illinois, Colorado, New Mexico and Washington, have been drafting state protections or have increased state funding to replace the loss of federal oversight. Some red states, including Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee, have passed or considered measures to roll back safeguards that are no longer mandated by the feds.

The lobbying from environmental groups on one side and developers and farm groups on the other has sent states moving in opposite directions during the 2024 legislative session.

A ‘fallback plan’

The Supreme Court ruling in the Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency case last year stripped Clean Water Act protections from wetlands that do not share a surface connection with a larger body of water, leaving out many waters that connect through underground channels. The decision leaves more than half of the nation’s 118 million acres of wetlands without federal oversight. In 24 states, no state-level regulations cover those waters, according to the Environmental Law Institute, a nonprofit research group.

“Illinois did not have a fallback plan,” said state Sen. Laura Ellman, a Democrat who is sponsoring the bill to protect wetlands under state law. “We’re cobbling one together right now. The intent is to restore what we had in place before.”

Democratic state Rep. Anna Moeller, the measure’s House sponsor, noted that Illinois has lost 90% of its wetlands since the early 1800s.

“Wetlands are important in improving water quality for drinking water because they filter contaminants,” she said. “They’re good for preventing flooding because they act as a natural sponge. They’re good for native species.”

Ellman and Moeller said bill supporters are working with state regulators to make some minor technical changes before it advances. Paul Botts, executive director of the Wetlands Initiative, a Chicago-based nonprofit, said environmental advocates and regulatory officials have concerns about funding for the program, which lawmakers hope will be largely covered by fees on permit applicants.

Backers don’t yet have a price tag for how much the permitting program would cost, and regulators in other states have found it difficult to cover their funding needs through fees alone.

But “the overall concept of Illinois stepping up where the feds have stepped back does seem to be resonating,” Botts said. “There’s plenty more sausage-making to come, because Illinois has not even had the bones of such a program. We’re really starting from scratch here.”

Unlike Illinois, neighboring Indiana did have state wetlands rules prior to the Sackett decision. But lawmakers moved quickly this year to shift some wetlands into classifications that have fewer protections.

“You have a ditch that’s backing up water and all of a sudden we’re calling this a wetland,” said Republican state Sen. Rick Niemeyer, the bill’s sponsor. “Our developers were having trouble with the definitions. Agriculture was getting hit with this.”

In Indiana, Illinois and many other states, local homebuilders’ groups have been among the leading voices to curtail wetlands regulation. Rick Wajda, CEO of the Indiana Builders Association, echoed Niemeyer’s assertion that the law will reduce protections only for “low-quality wetlands.”

“We look at any regulation to see if there’s ways we can bring more houses to the market,” he said. “If we allow a property to be used to its fullest intent, then maybe we can get more houses into the market and start to soften the housing shortage.”

But many environmental advocates in Indiana say the new law’s supporters are understating its effects. They argue that Republicans rushed the measure through the legislative process in just over a month to avoid public scrutiny.

“The more oxygen it got, the more Hoosiers would have spoken out against it,” said Democratic state Sen. Shelli Yoder. “If you look across Indiana and see the increases in flooding, the increases in drought, the presence of the worst kind of PFAS [chemicals], it’s hard to shrug off and say it’s just a mud puddle.”

Yoder said developers have told her that building on wetlands is an expensive task, even with no regulations in place, undermining claims that regulatory rollbacks will lead to affordable housing.

Writing new rules

Like Illinois, several other Democratic-led states have passed or considered bills to create wetlands protections or increase funding to state regulatory agencies to compensate for the loss of federal support.

In Colorado, state legislative leaders are expected to introduce a bill in the coming days that would establish state-level protections for the wetlands that lost coverage following the Sackett decision. Supporters say Colorado and other states with arid regions are especially vulnerable, because the Supreme Court ruling also cut protections for “ephemeral” streams that don’t flow year-round.

“We really only have one shot to get this right,” said Josh Kuhn, water campaign manager with Conservation Colorado, a Denver-based nonprofit. “Once these wetlands are destroyed, they’re basically gone forever. If we don’t have a strong program, we could see increased costs associated with water treatment, with the impacts of flooding, with the threat of wildfire.”

In New Mexico, state regulators already had been working to establish a permitting program that covers wetlands. State leaders say the court ruling increased the urgency to put state oversight in place.

“It got our legislature’s attention, hence the reason they were anxious to fund this,” said John Rhoderick, director of the Water Protection Division within the state Environment Department. “It’s easier to prevent contamination or degradation of your water than it is to have to clean it up after it happens.”

In the budget passed by state lawmakers earlier this year, Rhoderick’s agency received $7 million to help establish the program. The funding will allow the agency to hire enforcement staff, improve its mapping of state waters and establish a permitting database. Agency officials expect to publish draft rules this fall, with regulations officially in place by 2027. Once fully established, the program will require 35 to 50 dedicated staffers.

“The department has been short-staffed for a number of years,” said Doug Meiklejohn, water quality and land restoration advocate with Conservation Voters New Mexico. “This is critical. We’re pushing for development of a surface water permitting program, and that’s going to involve hiring people with expertise to put together regulations and standards where they’re needed.”

Lawmakers in Washington state also provided a funding boost for agency regulators. The state’s Department of Ecology already has well-established wetlands standards, but it’s expecting an influx of permit applications for waters that were once covered by federal agencies. With an extra $2 million, agency leaders say they’ll be able to add more staffers to ensure permits are processed on time.

“This will really help,” said Lauren Driscoll, manager of the wetlands program with the Washington State Department of Ecology. “We’re focused on getting things in place so we don’t have any delays.”

States step back

Indiana’s move to cut wetlands standards followed North Carolina’s rollback of state laws soon after the Sackett decision.

“We generally don’t regulate more stringently than the federal government,” Ray Starling, president of the NC Chamber Legal Institute, the legal strategy arm of the business advocacy group, told Stateline at the time.

While Republican lawmakers overrode the veto of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, the governor issued an executive order in February directing state agencies to conserve 1 million acres of natural lands, with an emphasis on wetlands. The order directed state leaders to avoid projects that would harm vulnerable wetlands, while also instructing state agencies to pursue more federal funding for wetlands restoration.

“It’s unfortunate that the state legislature tried to lock in the damage done by Sackett, but there are still things that can be done in places where a governor is more interested in environmental protection than polluter profits,” said Julian Gonzalez, senior legislative counsel for policy and legislation at Earthjustice, an environmental law group.

Meanwhile, a bill in Tennessee to eliminate state wetlands standards did not advance out of committee, following strong pushback from state regulators and environmental groups. Backers of the bill said environmental officials have made it too costly to farm or develops lands that have wet areas. The proposal was sent to a legislative summer study session.

The measure “has real consequences that would negatively impact Tennessee’s natural heritage and our environmental resiliency,” Grace Stranch, CEO of the Harpeth Conservancy, told the Tennessee Lookout.

Missouri lawmakers are considering a bill that would narrow state protections. In an analysis of the bill, the state’s Department of Natural Resources said the measure’s fiscal impact was incalculable, as the lowered standards could threaten the aquifers that provide drinking water to 59% of Missouri residents.

Agriculture groups have supported the bill, the Missouri Independent reported, saying current regulations apply to areas that would be better characterized as ditches.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

The Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan will reportedly be awarded a $1.5 billion federal loan, aimed at restarting operations after a 2022 closure. The federal funding could bolster state efforts to keep nuclear power on the grid, as leaders seek to transition to carbon-free electricity (Courtesy of The Herald-Palladium).

In the coming years, a nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan could become the first in the country to restart operations after shutting down.

The Palisades plant in southwest Michigan could be revived by a $1.5 billion loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, Bloomberg reported. Federal officials have not yet confirmed the funding, but Dr. Kathryn Huff, assistant secretary in the agency’s Office of Nuclear Energy, told Stateline that it would be “exciting” and “historic” to see the plant return to life.

The potential federal investment comes as state leaders in Michigan and elsewhere have worked to preserve their nuclear power capacity. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer successfully pushed for $150 million in state funding last year to support the Palisades restart. The plant is owned by Florida-based Holtec International, which bought it in 2022 to decommission it.

Reviving the plant “is really significant to make sure we can meet our clean-energy goals,” said Kara Cook, chief of staff with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. “This is really important to us not only from a climate perspective, but also the economic impact on the region.”

As states seek to transition to carbon-free electricity, some leaders acknowledge their climate change goals may be out of reach if they can’t keep their nuclear plants online. Nuclear has struggled to compete on cost with other power sources — while also facing concerns about safety risks and radioactive waste — but it provides 18% of the nation’s electricity. The closure of nuclear plants, some state officials fear, could lead to an expansion of fossil fuel-powered replacements, worsening the climate problem.

“You’re starting to see a lot of states transition to a position where they’re supportive of nuclear,” said Todd Allen, chair of the Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences department at the University of Michigan. “And compared to 30 years ago, the amount of federal support for nuclear is unbelievable.”

California also received a boost of federal money in an award finalized last month to keep open a nuclear plant run by Pacific Gas and Electric, known as PG&E. Other states, including Connecticut, Illinois and New Jersey, have passed legislation in recent years to provide subsidies for existing nuclear plants.

Huff, the federal energy official, said U.S. nuclear production may need to reach 200 gigawatts — roughly double the current capacity — to provide clean, “always-on” power as less-constant solar and wind provide a growing share of the nation’s electricity. Last year, the Biden administration committed to an international pledge to triple nuclear capacity by 2050.

“We’re still going to need a significant amount of nuclear to back that all up,” she told Stateline. “Keeping existing plants online is the easiest way to ensure nuclear power can back up renewables.”

Meanwhile, both red and blue states have taken steps to allow for the development of small modular reactors, an emerging technology that backers say can help to power rural areas or industrial operations without the demands of a large plant. Six states — Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Montana, West Virginia and Wisconsin — recently repealed bans on adding new nuclear power, in part to enable such reactors.

While some environmental groups have embraced the nuclear investments, others have pointed to long-standing concerns about safety issues, citing infamous accidents such as those at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Opponents also note the long-term issue of radioactive waste storage, and in some cases assert that nuclear can stall the growth of renewables such as wind and solar.

“With the amount of money that’s gone into this [Palisades] restart scheme already, you could develop brand-new renewable energy proposals that would be online in the same time frame producing more electricity,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear, an environmental nonprofit that opposes nuclear energy.

While more states have passed policies to give nuclear a boost, federal funding in Michigan and elsewhere could supercharge efforts to ensure plants stay open. The Department of Energy is distributing $6 billion from the federal infrastructure law to help save reactors that were slated for closure. The agency awarded funding to the California plant in the first round but has not yet announced awardees from the second round, although applications closed last May.

The agency also is overseeing a loan program — which reportedly will provide the Palisades funding — to repower or repurpose energy infrastructure.

The federal climate law passed in 2022 also opened tax credits for new and existing nuclear plants, designed to incentivize clean energy production in the same way existing credits support wind and solar. Since the passage of the tax credits, Huff said, federal regulators have seen an increased interest from plant operators pursuing license renewals to extend the operating life of their reactors.

Meanwhile, the CHIPS and Science Act passed by Congress also includes funding for federal nuclear research, university programs, new research reactors, isotope production and advanced reactors.

The federal support is providing “huge stimulation” to nuclear power while working in tandem with existing state efforts, said Christine Csizmadia, senior director of state governmental affairs and advocacy with the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade association.

Michigan reboot

When Palisades closed amid financial struggles in 2022, it represented roughly 5% of Michigan’s electricity supply. That has been replaced largely with natural gas generation, Cook said. The expansion of fossil fuel-based power conflicts with legislation passed last year requiring the state to move to 100% clean energy by 2040.

So when the plant’s new owner, Holtec International, announced that it was aiming to bringing the 800-megawatt plant back online, state leaders were on board. The company plans to add a pair of small modular reactors to the existing plant, bringing its capacity to 1,400 megawatts — enough to power more than a million homes. Holtec did not respond to interview requests, but company spokesperson Nick Culp told Reuters the company expects the plant to have full power operation by the end of 2025.

The $150 million in last year’s Michigan state budget to support the plant’s restart will help pay for fuel purchases and infrastructure upgrades, Cook said. Whitmer has requested an additional $150 million in this year’s budget to help bring Palisades online.

“This is really an all-hands-on-deck approach,” said Cook, citing the hundreds of union jobs that could return to the region if the plant reopens. She said the state funding was critical to show both Holtec and federal officials that there was strong support in Michigan to save Palisades. Holtec has said it could employ about 520 people at the plant.

States’ support

In recent years, many states have provided financial support to struggling nuclear plants, made nuclear eligible for clean energy credits or repealed long-standing bans on the construction of new reactors.

“We’ve seen this incredible uptick of nuclear energy legislation,” said Csizmadia, with the nuclear trade association.

Huff, the federal official, noted that several of the states that recently repealed bans on new nuclear power have many coal-dependent communities that could be “left behind” if their coal plants retire. Backers of nuclear, especially the emerging small modular reactor technology, believe old coal plants could be revived to put existing infrastructure to use in service of nuclear power and bring back high-wage jobs.

Nuclear electricity production across the country has been relatively stagnant for two decades, with plants struggling to compete with lower-cost options such as natural gas. Construction of new reactors has almost completely stopped amid regulatory hurdles and spiking project costs.

Opponents of nuclear point to the canceled projects, delays and cost overruns as proof that nuclear isn’t viable.

“This is just throwing good money after bad,” said Kamps, the anti-nuclear advocate. “We stand horrified at the actions being taken by Congress and certain state governments.”

Kamps also cited previous nuclear disasters and warned of the risks of extending aging plants.

But as states look to clean up their energy grids, some leaders say they can’t afford to lose their nuclear power.

“A lot of people believe we can power California with renewables alone and batteries,” said Carl Wurtz, executive director of Fission Transition, a pro-nuclear advocacy group. “We’re going to be tied to natural gas indefinitely if we try to do it that way.”

Wurtz was among the advocates who pushed California to extend the life of PG&E’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which had been scheduled to close in 2025. He and others argued that the loss of the plant’s 2,240 megawatts — 9% of California’s electricity — would force the state to import more power generated from fossil fuels.

As with the Michigan plant, state leaders in California, including Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, successfully lobbied the feds for money to keep Diablo Canyon open. Last month, the Department of Energy finalized a $1.1 billion payout to extend the plant’s operations. That followed a vote from state regulators to push the plant’s shutdown date back to 2030.

Supporters of nuclear say it’s a necessary complement to wind and solar because of the reliability it provides.

“We need baseload power that runs 24/7,” said Lisa Marshall, vice president of the American Nuclear Society and assistant extension professor with the North Carolina State University Department of Nuclear Engineering. “If we’re going to make [carbon-free electricity] happen, nuclear has to be part of that mix.”

The California plant is still awaiting the renewal of its license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. PG&E did not respond to an interview request.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

Millions of acres of wetlands recently lost federal protection under the Clean Water Act after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Some states are attempting to fill the void, but permitting programs — and the staff needed to enforce them — have proven costly (Rob Levine/Minnesota Reformer).

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court stripped federal oversight from millions of acres of wetlands long protected under the Clean Water Act. Now, any safeguards to ensure those waters are not polluted, drained or filled in by development fall to the states.

They’re finding that it’s not easy.

“States and tribes already didn’t have enough funding to support the programs they have, and now they are being put in a position where they need to step up,” said Marla Stelk, executive director of the National Association of Wetland Managers, a nonprofit group that represents state and tribal regulators.

Wetlands play a crucial role in filtering pollution and nutrient runoff. They also absorb stormwater, help to recharge aquifers and provide essential habitat for many species. When wetland areas are lost, water managers say, communities may suffer from flooding, become more vulnerable to droughts or require expensive treatment plants to make water safe to drink.

In some states, the loss of federal rules means that many waters are now largely unregulated. Some lawmakers, mostly in Democratic-led states, are looking to craft rules to replace the lost Clean Water Act protections, but they expect a yearslong process just to get new regulations on the books.

Other states have had strong rules in place even without the federal coverage. But now they can no longer rely on federal partners such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help enforce those standards. Regulators in those states are asking lawmakers for millions of dollars to hire more staff to process permits and monitor water quality.

Meanwhile, some conservative states view the rollback as an opportunity for developers and industry. Soon after the court decision, North Carolina passed a law eliminating all state protections that exceeded the federal standard. Environmental advocates say other business-friendly states are unlikely to enact their own protections, and fear that some will follow North Carolina’s lead by cutting existing rules.

“It ought to help with regard to costs and predictability,” said Ray Starling, president of the NC Chamber Legal Institute, the legal strategy arm of the business advocacy group, in a June interview with Stateline. “The Supreme Court knew that this would end up yielding quite a bit more jurisdiction to the states. We would argue that’s actually good.”

State leaders say they remain unclear on exactly which waters have lost federal oversight following the Supreme Court decision and a subsequent EPA rule based on it. Officials expect plenty of litigation as they attempt to make sense of murky legal definitions from the feds. Some fear that developers may take advantage of the confusion, using states’ uncertainty as implicit permission to bulldoze wetlands.

“Every state’s risk has increased,” said Julian Gonzalez, senior legislative counsel for policy and legislation at Earthjustice, an environmental law group. “The whole point of the Clean Water Act was to ensure that there’s not a patchwork of regulations. Even when EPA had full jurisdiction, there were tons of enforcement issues all across the country. This is only going to exacerbate them.”

Staffing shortfalls

In May, the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Water Act does not cover wetlands that lack a continuous surface connection to a larger body of water, which excludes many waters that connect underground. The court also narrowed the law to exclude from protection “ephemeral” streams that flow only seasonally.

Of the nation’s 118 million acres of wetlands, more than half could lose federal protection under the new definition, Earthjustice estimated. The EPA in August issued a new rule revising its regulation known as the “waters of the United States” rule to meet the court’s limitations.

“We still don’t know how [courts] are fully going to interpret what constitutes a surface connection, but we’re still assuming that at least 50% of [Washington’s] wetlands are no longer jurisdictional [under the Clean Water Act],” said Lauren Driscoll, manager of the wetlands program with the Washington State Department of Ecology.

With the feds bowing out, Driscoll’s agency may have to process an additional 50 to 100 permits a year, up from the 12 or so it currently handles. The agency is currently enforcing state wetland standards using a customized administrative order for each permit. Regulators are asking state lawmakers to enact a dedicated permit program that would create a standardized application process.

The agency also is seeking 10 more staffers to process permits, and three more temporary workers to help develop the new program. Once established, the permit program will cost about $2.2 million per year to administer, Driscoll said.

In California, regulators say they’ll also need more funding and staff to enforce state wetlands laws. For waters that are losing federal protection, states such as California will lose access to environmental analyses, expertise and staff capacity from federal partners such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“We are anticipating no longer having support from the [U.S.] Army Corps of Engineers for things we’ve relied on them to do on the technical side” in waters that are no longer protected as waters of the United States, said Karen Mogus, deputy director of the Division of Water Quality within the State Water Resources Control Board. “We have protections in place, we have state authority, but we are certainly seeking additional resources to cover the gap that we have estimated is going to be opened up.”

While the agency’s specific funding request remains confidential, Mogus said, the loss of federal support could delay the issuance of permits. Regulators also might have to set up a state version of a federal pollution discharge program that covers wastewater plants and other industries.

A few states already have passed laws that are broader than the federal standard, with well-established permit programs to uphold them. In Minnesota, for instance, state officials say their efforts will be largely unaffected by the court decision. But they acknowledge that other states may be hard-pressed to enact protections such as Minnesota’s 1991 Wetland Conservation Act.

“It would be very difficult to even consider doing something like that today,” said Dave Weirens, assistant director for programs and policy with the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources. “Democrats and Republicans found it easier to find common cause to solve problems than they do today.”

Last year, New York lawmakers passed a measure to expand the wetlands covered by state regulators, in part because of the pending Supreme Court case. Officials with the state Department of Environmental Conservation did not grant an interview about that effort, but supplied a statement saying the expansion would protect an additional 1 million acres of wetlands.

Making investments

Other states are working to put firmer protections on the books. In New Mexico, officials already had been working prior to the ruling to establish a surface water permitting program.

While the state currently has standards to protect wetlands, it’s enforcing them via administrative orders rather than a well-defined program. Agency officials have been coordinating with counterparts in Washington state, which is also using administrative orders, even as both states work toward a more defined program.

“We’d like to get away from boutique permits, these individual one-off permits and standardize this,” said John Rhoderick, director of the Water Protection Division within the state Environment Department. “Each permit is an adventure to say the least.”

Rhoderick said it will take about five years to get the state program fully established, requiring an additional 35 to 40 staff members and $5 million to $6 million per year. He said state lawmakers have been supportive of that effort, and he anticipates they will empower his agency to begin a rulemaking process late next year.

Colorado is among the states without strong wetlands protections. Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, has proposed $600,000 in his budget request as an “initial investment” toward developing a program, spokesperson Katherine Jones said in an email. The governor’s office declined an interview request seeking more details on that proposed program. Developers in the state say they’re monitoring the process, while environmental advocates say they’re working with officials to craft laws that will restore protections for Colorado’s waters.

“We are fully intent, both advocates and the government, to get a program in place that will at a minimum return us to where we were at [with federal oversight],” said Ean Tafoya, Colorado state director with GreenLatinos, an environmental justice organization. “What’s frustrating is that we could have been taking these steps a few years ago.”

While Polis’ budget request may help to kick-start a rulemaking process, Tafoya said, establishing a full regulatory program will cost millions of dollars. While specific bill language hasn’t been released, he said he expects lawmakers to consider legislation that would direct the state Water Quality Control Division to establish standards by a certain date.

Illinois activists also are pushing for legislative action.

“Wetlands are one of the few natural tools we have to filter our nutrient pollution, and they have the capacity to hold water, which helps mitigate flooding,” said Eliot Clay, land use programs director with the Illinois Environmental Council. “They are going to help us get through some of the worst impacts of climate change.”

At present, Clay said, the state’s wetlands protections are vague, and the state Department of Natural Resources is understaffed. But he believes Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker is interested in bolstering the state’s standards, and advocates expect to see a bill in the legislature next year.

Pritzker’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

Workers prepare to replace older water pipes with a new copper one in Newark, N.J., in October 2021. Nearly a dozen states have passed laws to dramatically increase the valuation of water and sewer systems — but community activists say those laws have motivated private water companies to buy up local water systems and drastically raise rates on customers (Seth Wenig/The Associated Press).

For residents in some Pennsylvania communities, flushing the toilet has suddenly gotten much more expensive.

In many townships and counties, rates have spiked as private water companies have bought up wastewater systems from local governments.

The new push to privatize sewer services follows the passage of a state law in 2016 that allows the dollar value of water systems to include not just pipes and plants but market factors such as their worth to the community, allowing them to be sold at much higher prices.

Community groups and municipal leaders say that law, an example of “fair market value” legislation, has unleashed dozens of buyout attempts as private companies have offered tens of millions of dollars for local water systems. Pennsylvania’s municipalities have been at the forefront of the national movement, though an ongoing court case could slow the state’s momentum.

The deals provide a short-term cash boost for local governments, which can struggle to cover the cost of aging infrastructure. But critics say the public services and tax savings that governments might provide residents with the quick money don’t make up for the rate hikes, a phenomenon known as “taxing through the tap.”

“Big Water tells municipal officials, ‘You’re going to get free money.’ “That’s a lie. That money is going to be paid for by ratepayers,” said Bill Ferguson, a co-founder of Keep Water Affordable. The community group protested the 2020 sale of the wastewater system in New Garden Township, a community of about 11,000 residents near the Delaware border, to Aqua Pennsylvania.

Fifteen states have enacted “fair market value” laws to boost the sale price of water systems, according to the National Association of Water Companies, an industry group. Most of those laws have passed within the past decade, with Florida becoming the latest earlier this year. Public water activists say the private water industry has lobbied hard in state capitols, while also pushing Congress to provide them with federal funding that has historically been reserved for local governments.

Research published last year in Water Policy, the journal of the international think tank World Water Council, surveyed the United States’ 500 largest water systems and found that private ownership was the most significant variable in driving up utility bills — even more than aging infrastructure, water supply and local regulations.

While the survey focused on drinking water systems, Marcela González Rivas, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the study’s authors, said privatization of any system conflicts with the human right to water.

“Providing water is really expensive as it is,” she said. “If you then add making a profit as part of the cost of the service, it just makes it really unaffordable.”

New Garden Township was the first sewer sale that state regulators approved after the passage of Pennsylvania’s valuation law. Ferguson’s group says the community has seen bill increases approaching 85% since the takeover.

Opponents of valuation laws say the measures have largely passed with little public awareness or controversy, as water companies have donated heavily to Republicans and Democrats alike. At the local level, residents are often unaware that their water system is up for sale until a deal is being finalized.

“If someone else had been No. 1, we might have had time [to stop it],” said David Unger, chair of the New Garden Township board of supervisors, who was elected after the sale was finalized. “The fact that we were first in line — we became the lesson.”

‘Fair market value’

Roughly 97% of sewer customers in the U.S. get their service from a public system, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. But private water companies, which control more than 10% of the drinking water market, are pushing to get into the wastewater business. In many states, “fair market value” legislation has been a key tool in that effort.

Historically, the sale price of regulated water systems has been determined by the book value of their assets, including pipes and treatment plants. But these new state laws enable outside appraisers to incorporate other factors, such as the system’s value to the community. Critics say that has allowed systems to sell for many times what they’re worth.

For local governments, the higher prices under the fair market value model make it enticing to sell off their infrastructure. And the water companies want a higher sale price as well: Higher acquisition payments allow the companies to charge higher rates to recover those costs, driving up profits, which are determined by a percentage of their investments.

“Both the seller and buyer want the highest price possible,” said Mary Grant, director of the Public Water for All campaign with Food and Water Watch, an environmental advocacy nonprofit. “Who loses? It’s the ratepayers.”

The private water industry argues that privatization is an important tool when cash-strapped municipalities can’t keep up with the maintenance needs of their aging infrastructure. Fair market value, they say, gives local governments financial relief via the hefty sale price.

“Most of the time it is willing seller, willing buyer,” said Jenn Kocher, vice president of communications and marketing with the National Association of Water Companies, a trade association. “Municipalities … see that there are better options out there through private systems and their economies of scale.”

Many public water advocates acknowledge that sell-offs can help keep water systems running when municipalities can’t afford the maintenance costs. But in Pennsylvania, they say, many of the systems being bid on are in perfectly fine shape.

“I don’t think they’re targeting distressed systems at all,” said Kofi Osei, a member of Towamencin Neighbors Opposing Privatization Efforts, a local activist group. “Our system is actually very well maintained, and we recently did some pretty substantial upgrades.”

Osei’s group is fighting the sale of the sewer system in Towamencin Township, a community of nearly 18,000 residents near Philadelphia, to American Water, the nation’s largest private water and wastewater company. Activists backed a home rule charter, passed by voters this year, to amend the county’s governing document to ban privatization of the system. Township supervisors, Osei said, are still trying to proceed with the sale, while residents are suing them to block it.

Neither American Water nor township Board of Supervisors Chair Chuck Wilson responded to an interview request.

‘Ground zero’

In Pennsylvania, Food and Water Watch said that more than 30 water systems — primarily sewer — have been sold off since the passage of the 2016 law.

Another dozen or so local governments are currently considering offers, according to Jennie Shade, senior director of government relations with the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association, which represents the special purpose districts that oversee public services and is seeking to protect local oversight.

Shade’s group estimates that completed acquisitions are costing ratepayers $70 million to $85 million annually in higher water bills, and pending sales could double that amount.

“We’re seeing buyer’s remorse in a lot of communities,” she said. “Pennsylvania has become ground zero for the commoditization of our precious public water supply.”

Since the beginning of this year, Food and Water Watch has tracked 31 water or wastewater systems nationwide that have been purchased by private companies or have a pending sale proposal. All but three are in states with fair market value laws on the books. Thirteen are in Pennsylvania.

Kocher, with the National Association of Water Companies, said many of the communities that sold their systems would have faced rate increases anyway to pay for overdue maintenance needs. Community activists said water companies’ rate hikes far exceed repair costs.

“We were told that without a sale, our rates would go up 78% to fund $12 million of infrastructure improvements,” said Pete Mrozinsi, a co-founder of the group in New Garden Township that opposed the sale to Aqua Pennsylvania. “After the sale, our rates went up 85% with no infrastructure improvements.”

Requests for comment from Aqua Pennsylvania and its parent company, Essential Utilities, were directed to a spokesperson with an outside communications firm, who was unable to arrange an interview by publication time.

Opposition grows

Activists in Pennsylvania say communities are starting to see the risks of privatization offers. Municipal officials in Bucks County, Newberry Township and Williston Township rejected purchase offers after significant local opposition.

State Sen. John Kane, a Democrat, made his living as a plumber but had never heard of the sewer privatization movement until he was elected in 2020. He learned that the city of Chester, which is in bankruptcy, was considering selling its water system for $410 million.

Kane said other communities in his district have seen rate hikes as high as 100% after selling off their water systems, and he’s joined local residents in opposing the Chester sale. He also has introduced legislation to repeal the state’s fair market value law.

“This is a junk accounting tool that games the system for private water companies to acquire infrastructure and profit off of basic human needs,” he said.

Kane’s bill has been stalled in the Consumer Protection & Professional Licensure Committee, which is chaired by Republican state Sen. Patrick Stefano. According to data collected by the government transparency group OpenSecrets, Stefano has received $13,500 in campaign contributions from water companies or their officials since 2014.

Stefano did not reply to a request for comment. House Speaker Joanna McClinton, a Democrat, did not respond to a request for comment, while staffers for Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, a Republican, said he was unavailable to connect for an interview.

OpenSecrets has tracked nearly 3,700 donations made by water companies or their associates to Pennsylvania candidates, totaling almost $2.7 million.

Activists won a legal battle earlier this year when the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court overturned the state Public Utilities Commission’s approval of a sewer sale in East Whiteland Township. The court ruled that regulators had failed to show any public benefit of the sale.

Some activists think the court decision, if upheld by the state Supreme Court, could help dismantle the privatization push by forcing regulators to acknowledge its toll on ratepayers.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

Members of the Leech Lake Band of the Ojibwe Tribe harvest wild rice on Mud Lake in Minnesota. The tribe is among those that have asserted authority to set water quality standards under the Clean Water Act to protect cultural and subsistence resources (Flickr/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers).

Across the roughly 1,300 square miles of the White Earth Indian Reservation in northwest Minnesota, tribal members harvest wild rice in waters that have sustained them for generations. They’ve been working for decades to restore sturgeon, a culturally important fish, and they harvest minnows and leeches to supply bait for anglers across the country.

But the White Earth Band can no longer depend on the clean, abundant waters that make those activities possible. Droughts brought on by climate change and irrigation for agriculture have threatened the reservation’s rivers and lakes. Manure runoff from factory farms could poison the water that’s left.

Last year, the tribal government passed an ordinance to restrict withdrawals of water from the reservation and adjacent lands that share an aquifer. Under the statute, farms and other businesses seeking to withdraw more than 1 million gallons per year must obtain a permit from the tribe.

“White Earth firmly believes that if they did not take this action, the health and well-being of their members would be imminently harmed,” said Jamie Konopacky, the tribe’s environmental attorney. “Because of the growing concern about massive water appropriations, they passed this ordinance to give themselves independent permitting authority.”

The tribe’s action has not stopped the state from issuing water withdrawal permits on reservation land, a dispute currently being contested in tribal court. While the legal battle is with a farmer, not the state, Minnesota officials are examining the jurisdictional issues in play, and the tribe is urging them to recognize its sovereignty.

White Earth leaders are joining a growing effort by tribal nations to protect waters in Indian Country — asserting their sovereignty to target pollution that’s threatening wild rice in Minnesota, shellfish in Washington and salmon in California.

Some of the nations have passed tribal ordinances to regulate polluters on reservation lands. Others have sought authority under the federal Clean Water Act to establish their own water quality standards, giving them a legal mechanism to combat pollution coming from upstream.

“The tribe’s treaty right to harvest and consume shellfish and finfish is not a meaningful right if they’re not safe to eat,” said Hansi Hals, natural resources director for the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula.

Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe approval to issue its own water quality standards under the Treatment as a State (TAS) program. That status essentially gives tribes the same regulatory power over certain water quality programs as states, once they have proven their jurisdiction on waters that run through or connect to reservation and tribal trust lands. The tribe plans to adopt standards under that authority sometime next year.

Meanwhile, the EPA is working to establish “baseline” water quality standards for tribes that have not yet adopted their own, ensuring that all Native lands receive Clean Water Act protections.

As tribes establish their own standards and permitting programs, some experts believe they could play a critical role in fighting pollution and ensuring that the resources they depend on for subsistence and cultural values are preserved.

But tribal leaders acknowledge that regulatory programs are expensive and time-consuming to establish, and some tribes can’t afford them. And many tribes that seek to assert their sovereignty risk costly legal battles with industry-friendly states, which are reluctant to give up their own permitting authority. Meanwhile, a new presidential administration could appoint EPA leaders hostile to tribal interests, undoing recent efforts.

Asserting sovereignty

In 1987, Congress passed a provision allowing tribes to set their own water quality standards in the same manner as states, recognizing that Native reservations had been left out of the powers delegated to states under the Clean Water Act.

“Clean Water Act standards don’t exist in Indian Country,” said Jim Grijalva, a professor at the University of North Dakota School of Law and a longtime advocate for tribal water programs. “The problem is a racist assumption that tribes shouldn’t have the governmental right to do anything.”

While the Treatment as a State program sought to correct that, its lengthy and complicated approval process has made it challenging for tribes to pursue that option. Only 84 of the nation’s 574 federally recognized tribes are recognized under the TAS program. And only 326 tribes have reservation land, further limiting the nations that can apply.

But momentum is growing. A 2016 EPA rule streamlined the application process, and 22 tribes — more than a quarter of those approved — have earned TAS status since 2020.

“The learning curve has been slow at times, but tribes are realizing the ability to use their sovereign authority under the Clean Water Act as part of their arsenal for protection,” said Ken Norton, chair of the National Tribal Water Council, a tribal advocacy group.

Norton also directs the Tribal Environmental Protection Agency for the Hoopa Valley Tribe in California, which was among the first tribes approved for TAS status in 1996. The tribe’s regulatory authority on the Klamath River enabled it to negotiate the extension of a state-run salmon hatchery that was slated to close under a dam-removal plan.

“Our voice at the table, not as a stakeholder but as a regulatory entity, was strengthened because we had these federally approved water quality standards,” Norton said.

Grijalva, the law professor, noted that tribal standards can take into account factors such as the dietary habits of Native people who harvest food from the landscape.

“Tribes have inherent rights to make value judgments that are different than their neighbors,” he said. “If you set a dioxin standard, mercury standard or selenium standard based on risk to the average white guy, you’re not accounting for the tenfold increase in exposure to an Indigenous person.”

In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, members of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community fish for lake trout, brook trout and walleye on the reservation’s lakes and rivers. The tribe earned TAS status in 2020 and is working to issue water quality standards by the end of the year.

“We’re a fishing community, so the protection of water quality is of utmost importance,” said Dione Price, the tribe’s environmental specialist and environmental health section lead. “This really does give the tribe a seat at the table in water protection.”

The Karuk Tribe in California also received TAS approval in 2020. Grant Johnson, the tribe’s water quality program manager, said that step came after years of securing funding, hiring staff and building proficiency to ensure it could craft detailed regulations, monitor its waters and enforce its standards.

The Keweenaw Bay and Karuk tribes are among the 37 nations that have received TAS authority but are still working to issue water quality standards or waiting on EPA approval of those thresholds. While many are well underway, the staffing levels and expertise required to run a water quality program remain a major hurdle for some tribes.

“It’s great to take advantage of the politically open moment, but many tribes don’t have the resources and support to make their own standards,” said Sibyl Diver, a lecturer at Stanford University’s Earth Systems Program who has published research on TAS.

Diver also noted that many reservations are within states that are hostile to tribal sovereignty and environmental regulations. Such tribes are likely to face lawsuits from state governments and conservative groups, and may not have the resources for expensive legal battles.

New authorities

While many tribes have set standards that are more stringent than their neighbors, experts say that even thresholds that only match federal minimums give tribes a major tool. Just by holding that authority, tribes can participate in permitting decisions on upstream waters.

For the Chehalis Tribe in Washington state, water quality standards allow it to protect the salmon that swim in the Chehalis River.

“The tribe having its own standards means that if there’s a project or an issue that’s happening upstream, the tribe now has a say in what’s happening rather than waiting for the federal government to act on it,” said Jeff Warnke, the tribe’s director of government and public relations.

While more tribes work toward that regulatory power, others have started by setting tribal ordinances for their own reservations. Some, like the White Earth Band in Minnesota, see the establishment of an internal program as a precursor for pursuing TAS authority. Norton, with the National Tribal Water Council, said more tribal nations have issued such regulations in recent years, although specific figures are hard to come by.

Meanwhile, more tribes may seek to create or expand water ordinances after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year to remove millions of acres of wetlands from Clean Water Act jurisdiction, leaving their protection up to states and tribes.

As more tribes work to set up their own programs, the EPA has proposed a “baseline” water quality standard for tribal lands that are not yet covered under TAS. If the rule moves forward, it would provide protection for 76,000 miles of rivers and streams and 1.9 million acres of lakes and reservoirs that currently lack standards, the agency said.

“Some states like the fact that there’s no rules in Indian Country,” said Grijalva, the law professor. “But if a significant part of the country is not protected because it doesn’t have the most basic water quality standards, EPA isn’t doing its job.”

The federal agency did not make a spokesperson available for comment.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

The Cross Bronx Expressway is among the roads carved through communities of color that contribute to disproportionate levels of pollution. State efforts to remedy such inequities could be complicated by a Supreme Court ruling on college admissions that threatens race-conscious policies (Spencer Platt/Getty Images).

In recent years, some states have invested in air quality monitoring, applied extra scrutiny to permitting decisions and steered cleanup funding to minority communities that have borne the brunt of pollution for decades.

Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision striking down race-conscious college admissions policies, state lawmakers are facing a new conundrum: Can they remedy environmental racism without mentioning race?

“The [Supreme Court] majority really reinforced the idea that a generalized government policy of rectifying past discrimination would not pass constitutional muster,” said Emily Hammond, an environmental law expert and professor at the George Washington University Law School.

Lawmakers are scrambling to figure out what the ruling will mean for their environmental justice efforts. In some states, legislators expect lawsuits to threaten their policies. The question is whether they can defend those measures in court, or if they need to revise the laws in a race-neutral way to ensure they’re not struck down.

Studies have shown that communities of color face disproportionate levels of air and water pollution, less access to green space and significant health disparities as a result of those factors. Such communities often have been carved up with highways, refineries, fossil fuel plants and waste dumps.

“We want to acknowledge the harms we have done as a state with our environmental laws, with permitting, with waste and pollution, and reduce the harms to communities that have been impacted more, which are historically communities of color,” said Minnesota state Rep. Fue Lee.

The Democrat helped champion a law passed this year that forces regulators to consider cumulative pollution effects before issuing air quality permits in certain areas, including tracts with 40% or more nonwhite residents. But he acknowledged that lawmakers should prepare to revise those criteria if legal challenges upend the law.

“If we don’t want to use race, there’s proxies like health conditions we can use,” he said. “My district has one of the highest hospitalization rates for asthma and heart conditions. Those are some next steps we can take — we just have to be creative.”

In June, the Supreme Court ruled that colleges could no longer use race as a factor in admissions. In a 6-3 decision, the majority found that policies that give favor to minority applicants violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause.

Legal experts fear that could open the door to lawsuits challenging other race-conscious policies, including many state-level efforts to address environmental justice. Those legal battles could stall investments to help polluted communities.

“It is not that defending race-conscious measures is impossible; it is that doing so is expensive and time-consuming, as well as unlikely to persuade judges convinced that use of race is always pernicious,” wrote Toni Massaro, a constitutional law scholar with the University of Arizona, in an email to Stateline.

In many states, lawmakers said they’re still evaluating how to proceed.

“I share deep concerns of how this ruling will impact our environmental justice laws,” said Washington state Rep. Debra Lekanoff, a Democrat who was a key backer of the state’s cap-and-trade package, which auctions pollution allowances for carbon emissions and puts the revenue into clean energy and climate adaptation projects.

The package also increases air quality monitoring and directs revenue to “overburdened” communities. The state lists racial or ethnic minority populations among its criteria to identify those areas.

But even if the program faces a legal threat, Lekanoff said, other factors included in the analysis, such as pollution exposure and health impacts, may still serve to direct resources to communities affected by environmental racism.

“The science is going to tell us that the people who are losing their lives from environmental degradation are in communities of color,” she said. “Whether or not [race] is in the law, if you just look with wide eyes at who has faced the most detrimental impacts, the truth will come to the surface.”

Lekanoff said she and other legislators will consult with Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, to determine whether they should revise the law or prepare for a lawsuit.

The Biden administration established a “race-neutral” screening methodology known as the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool to guide its efforts to direct 40% of federal spending across many agencies to disadvantaged communities. The tool uses nearly two dozen environmental and economic factors, but omits race. Environmental justice advocates say the White House did so to insulate the program from legal challenges.

A Grist analysis found that the categories used by the Biden administration — including income, climate vulnerability, health, housing and legacy pollution — largely directed funding to communities of color.

“A breakdown of all U.S. census tracts shows that, as the number of non-white residents in a tract increases, a tract becomes more likely to be considered disadvantaged by the White House tool,” the analysis said.

Despite the legal uncertainty, some environmental justice advocates urged lawmakers not to turn a blind eye to race. Robert Bullard, a civil rights leader and professor at Texas Southern University, has been dubbed the father of the environmental justice movement. He pointed to federal statutes such as the Fair Housing Act and the Voting Rights Act that do account for race.

“If we were so timid, shy and somehow threatened by the Supreme Court coming in and throwing out everything, we would still be picking cotton in 2023,” he said. “We have to push back against those policies that are destroying our communities. If there are lawsuits that will come to our efforts to destroy racism, let it be, they should not cower us into fighting for our basic rights.”

Bullard said states that are concerned about legal challenges could draft provisions that mimic the White House tool, but he urged them to cross-reference other screening methods to determine if communities of color are being left out. Other tools, such as the program developed by California regulators, account for the cumulative impacts of the health and environmental factors facing each community.

Some lawmakers echoed Bullard’s call for boldness.

“The important thing is to not concede that our policymaking should obviously change,” said Michigan state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky, a Democrat and House speaker pro tempore. “If there is a challenge, we will deal with that as it arises. We are in the business of making good policy, not preemptively capitulating to an extremist unelected body.”

Pohutsky has drafted a bill that would direct utility regulators to minimize harm and prioritize benefits to minority and low-income areas. The measure is part of a larger package focused on renewable energy. Lawmakers also will consider a Senate bill that would invest a portion of the fines paid by polluters into “environmental protection communities,” as identified by a federal screening tool that does include race.

Pohutsky expressed confidence that those efforts, by accounting for many factors beyond race, could withstand legal challenges.

Hammond, the legal scholar, said race-based policies that govern regulatory actions, such as permitting decisions, may be on firmer legal ground than those that administer funding. The distribution of benefits based on race, Hammond said, would likely face closer scrutiny. Meanwhile, the court’s decision earlier this year to uphold the Indian Child Welfare Act may protect policies aimed at tribal communities — securing their status as sovereign political entities, not racial groups.

One option for lawmakers, Hammond said, is to draft so-called severability clauses. Such measures could enable them to continue using race in their analysis, but allow the laws to revert to something like the federal tool — rather than being struck down entirely — if race-based metrics are deemed invalid by a court.

“There’s a lot in [state environmental justice laws] that should be just fine, and there are perhaps pieces that present heightened risk,” Hammond said.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

Fire crews clear vegetation around the Timberline neighborhood in Packwood, Wash., during the Goat Rocks fire last year. A Forest Service grant program aims to help communities like Packwood prepare for the risk of wildfire. (Jared Wenzelburger/The Centralia, Washington, Chronicle)

PACKWOOD, Wash. — Last year, Don Pratt fled from his home as a wildfire swept down the mountainside here in Washington’s Cascade Range.

“Heading out, I thought it was the last time I was going to see the house,” he said.

As residents evacuated and smoke engulfed the small mountain community, fire crews with bulldozers and hand tools cut fuel breaks around Packwood’s Timberline neighborhood. The blaze came within half a mile of Pratt’s home before a shift in the wind helped firefighters hold the line.

“We got lucky,” said Lonnie Goble, chief of the local fire district. “The wind at the last second kind of quit, or it would have wiped out Timberline pretty easily.”

As hot, dry conditions returned to the area this month, locals said they’ll need more than just luck to survive the next fire. They’re hoping to remove trees and brush to create a buffer space around houses and structures, while removing low-hanging limbs in residential areas. But that work is expensive, and they haven’t been able to pay for it.

There’s actually a huge pot of federal money available to communities across the country — an unprecedented amount that would allow towns to quickly tackle work that otherwise would take decades. But local leaders in Packwood, which has fewer than 1,200 residents, and some other areas say they haven’t heard of the program, and most haven’t drafted the protection plans needed to apply for grants.

The U.S. Forest Service, which oversees the conifer-covered mountainsides surrounding Packwood, is distributing $1 billion to help communities protect themselves from wildfires. Some areas already have secured as much as $10 million to carry out major projects, and officials say the grants have greatly increased their chances of avoiding catastrophe.

But even as the federal agency takes in applications for the second round of funding, wildfire experts acknowledge that many communities could be left behind. Forest Service officials said a congressional deadline forced them to send out the first round of funding in a hurry. For future grants, they’re working to identify at-risk communities and proactively urge them to apply.

State and federal officials pointed to last week’s deadly fire in Lahaina, Hawaii, as an example of how many communities don’t realize the risk they’re facing. And many that do know the danger, such as Packwood, are not yet poised to compete for the grants. As hundreds of millions of dollars are handed out over the next several years, the places that receive that money could be much better protected from burning to the ground.

Living with fire

Over the years, federal and state policymakers have made big investments to reduce wildfire hazards across vast swaths of public lands. But money has been in short supply for the places where those uninhabited landscapes mingle with cities and towns.

“To think we’re going to stop every fire, that’s just not the case,” said Brad Simpkins, branch chief for cooperative fire programs with the U.S. Forest Service. “What we need to do is protect communities and mitigate the impact.”

Experts say communities in fire-prone areas need to do massive amounts of work if they’re to coexist with wildfire. That means removing vegetation around homes and structures. It also includes establishing evacuation corridors, creating fire breaks in surrounding forests and educating residents about the risks.

Under the infrastructure law Congress passed in 2021, the Forest Service was given $1 billion to help states, local governments, tribes, nonprofits and homeowners associations pay for projects to keep their communities safe from wildfires. The agency announced nearly $200 million in grant awards this March, and it’s currently taking applications for the second round.

Some advocates say the program represents an important shift, as wildfire spending has historically focused on things like helicopters and fire crews to put out fires. Extinguishing fires in some cases led to a buildup of flammable brush and trees and more severe fires.

“When we look back over the last few decades at budgets and how much went to suppression versus creating fire-adapted communities, it’s not even close,” said Megan Fitzgerald-McGowan, Firewise USA program manager with the National Fire Protection Association, a nonprofit that works to reduce fire risk. “But fire’s going to happen on the landscape, so how do we live with it?”

The Firewise program provides criteria for communities to increase their wildfire preparedness. Some states have provided funding to participating Firewise sites, ranging from neighborhoods to cities, to help carry out their plans.

State officials say they’re seeing rapid population growth in many rural and scenic areas that are surrounded by fire-prone landscapes. At the same time, hotter and drier conditions brought on by climate change — along with forests grown dense after a century of fire suppression practices — have dramatically increased wildfire risk.

The dollars from the infrastructure law could help lessen the risk.

In California’s Tuolumne County, local officials secured $10 million to create buffer space around nearly 1,300 homes and cut back vegetation along critical road corridors.

“We have to change the way we live; we have to respect it,” said Dore Bietz, assistant director of the county’s Office of Emergency Services. “We’re having to make up for a lot of years that we just didn’t focus on it.”

The county’s project is focused on three communities, but Bietz said many other areas face wildfire risk. Leaders are especially concerned about older and low-income residents who can’t afford work to greatly reduce flammable vegetation on their properties. The county hopes to apply for more grants in future rounds of funding.

The Forest Service awarded Grant County, Oregon, $9.9 million to apply herbicide to invasive grasses that are especially potent wildfire fuel. It also will use the money to clear brush along 308 miles of road that make up key evacuation routes.

“There’s been a lot of work on the landscape, but not as much work in town,” said Kyle Sullivan, district manager for the Grant Soil and Water Conservation District. “This is certainly the largest single grant we’ve ever secured.”

Getting the word out

In some places, state agencies have taken the lead in helping local governments get the federal money.

The Washington Department of Natural Resources has been reaching out to community leaders and conducting webinars to help them apply for funding. The agency has also applied for its own projects.

In the first round of grant awards, Washington saw more projects funded than any state but California. Despite that success, state officials acknowledged the challenge in reaching every community that needs help.

Packwood, for instance, does not have an updated Community Wildfire Protection Plan — a prerequisite for applying for the Forest Service grants. The federal program can provide money to develop such a plan, but local leaders hadn’t heard of that possibility. Packwood is unincorporated, but community entities that could apply for grants include homeowners associations, the local fire district, a nonprofit or the county government.

“If we were aware of that, we would have obviously tried to get together with other communities in this area to apply for some of that money,” said Pratt, who serves as treasurer for the Timberline Community Association. “That’s what it’s going to take — outside money to help people who can’t do it for themselves.”

Montana officials at the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation have tried to make communities aware of the funding, while providing technical expertise on applications and co-sponsoring projects.

Simpkins, the Forest Service official, said less than 10% of communities that face wildfire risk have adopted a protection plan. The next round of grant funding will focus on helping local leaders draft those documents.

The grant program prioritizes low-income communities that have a high hazard potential and previously have been hit by disaster. The federal agency is working to create a map of those areas, which it will use to reach out to locals.

The Utah Department of Natural Resources has used social media and webinars to encourage communities to apply. In the first round of funding, the Utah department received nearly $5 million to conduct risk assessments for communities across a six-county region. That will help area leaders update their protection plans and apply for money to carry out the work.

In New Mexico, the Cimarron Watershed Alliance, an environmental nonprofit, received more than $8 million to establish defensible space around homes and thin forests around some unincorporated Colfax County communities. Given the area’s wildfire risk, some advocates think more investment is needed.

“We’re trying to keep the county from burning down and turning into a moonscape,” said Rick Smith, the group’s executive director. “I’m pretty optimistic about getting more money. We’re going to go after as much as we can.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

The Steamboat Hills Geothermal Power Plant in Nevada pipes steam from underground to produce power. Some states see massive potential to expand geothermal operations (Flickr/ThinkGeoEnergy).

Lawmakers in some states have been laying the groundwork to add geothermal power to the electrical grid and pump underground heat into buildings. Now, a technological breakthrough could dramatically expand those ambitions — and perhaps unleash a new wave of policies to tap into geothermal sources.

Last month, a company announced the successful demonstration in the West of a new drilling technique that it says will greatly expand where geothermal plants could be built. And in the Eastern half of the country, where geothermal’s potential is mostly as a heating and cooling source, a community recently broke ground on the first utility-run thermal energy network.

Some officials say those advances show great promise. A handful of states approved laws this year and others are considering measures that would provide money and regulations to help the industry.

“There have been enormous technological breakthroughs in geothermal,” Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said in an interview with Stateline. “More geographic areas are now eligible and capable of producing inexpensive geothermal energy. You’re seeing more and more states addressing geothermal opportunities with the urgency that Colorado is.”

In the West, some states see geothermal power plants as a crucial source of “always-on” clean electricity — a resilient energy supply to bolster grids supplied by wind and solar.

At the same time, some lawmakers in Eastern states believe networks of underground heat could replace gas-powered furnaces for many neighborhoods, campuses and commercial buildings.

In both cases, supporters believe the transition to geothermal could draw on the drilling and pipeline construction expertise of oil and gas workers.

Still, it will take a lot to expand geothermal power. Exploratory drilling is expensive and uncertain, and industry leaders say government backing is required to make that initial phase manageable for companies.

Meanwhile, the drilling technique of injecting water to fracture rock has proven controversial in oil and gas operations. While geothermal projects don’t use the same chemicals that have been linked to groundwater pollution, other concerns — such as increased seismic activity — could challenge new proposals.

Unleashing potential

Last month, Texas-based Fervo Energy announced that its pilot plant in Nevada had successfully demonstrated the first commercially viable enhanced geothermal technology. Historically, geothermal power — which brings steam to the surface that powers turbines — has relied on sites with naturally occurring heat, fluid and permeable rock. Enhanced systems use oil and gas drilling techniques to create artificial reservoirs.

Sarah Jewett, the company’s vice president of strategy, said locations with permeable rock are limited and unpredictable. Horizontal drilling technology can be used to create that permeability and pump water into hotspots underground.

“This is the thing that really unleashes the potential of geothermal power, but it’s never been demonstrated on a commercial level in the U.S. before,” she said. “A lot of people said it couldn’t be done. This opens up massive new geographies [for geothermal power production].”

The plant will connect to Nevada’s grid later this year, providing 3.5 megawatts of electricity to power Google data centers. Fervo has started construction on another project in Utah that is expected to provide 400 megawatts by 2028. That’s enough to power 300,000 homes.

Geothermal provides less than half a percent of the nation’s electricity. Supporters believe that advances in technology will eventually enable it to power as much as 20% of the U.S. grid.

Fervo’s announcement could supercharge the ambitions of some Western states, which have been working to bring more geothermal power online. The Western Governors’ Association, chaired by Polis, has spearheaded an initiative on the issue and recently issued a report outlining several policy recommendations.

Industry leaders have called for clear policy guidelines and well-staffed permitting regimes, as well as public funding to support exploratory drilling, which can be financially risky for companies. They also urged more regulators to issue “clean firm” power standards such as California’s 1,000-megawatt order in 2021, which directed utilities to build out more projects from on-demand resources like geothermal.

In Colorado, lawmakers passed a slate of geothermal measures this year, including a framework for regulators to approve new geothermal operations. Under the measure, the state’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission was renamed the Energy and Carbon Management Commission and given oversight of geothermal projects.

“They now have an expedited approval process for geothermal drilling,” Polis said. “There really hadn’t been an easy way to do that before.”

Other bills signed by Polis will create a $35 million tax credit for geothermal electricity projects and allow gas utilities to establish thermal energy networks. Lawmakers also provided funding to help Colorado Mesa University expand its geothermal heating and cooling system.

Earlier this year, New Mexico state lawmakers passed a measure to provide loans and grants for geothermal projects and a funding increase to help state regulators speed up permitting decisions. The bill sailed through the legislature with near-unanimous support, but Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham declined to sign it, surprising backers.

“New Mexico has some of the easiest access to hot rock because of our geology, and we also have an availability of drilling rigs now in the oil and gas industry that can be put to use,” said state Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino, a Democrat who sponsored the bill.

Ortiz y Pino said lawmakers are hoping to meet with Lujan Grisham, address her objections and revive the bill next year. The governor, who cited fiscal responsibility in her veto of a tax credit package that included geothermal projects, did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, West Virginia leaders passed a law last year to establish a regulatory program for geothermal energy. The state has underground hotspots at relatively shallow depths compared with other Eastern states.

“We wanted to have the groundwork in place so if companies wanted to look at West Virginia, it wasn’t an unknown,” said Del. Adam Burkhammer, a Republican who sponsored the bill. “We’re not overregulating, we’re just establishing a clear path forward.”

Earlier this year, drilling began on the state’s first geothermal test well.

Thermal networks

In many Eastern states, the underground hotspots needed to produce electricity are many miles below the surface, making power production impractical with existing technology. But heating and cooling through geothermal can be achieved at much shallower depths, and many lawmakers see great promise.

“The potential is wildly exciting,” said Maryland Del. Lorig Charkoudian, a Democrat who is drafting legislation to enable geothermal heating networks. “This is a really important piece of the transition from fossil fuel to non-combusting clean energy.”

Geothermal systems bring heat from underground using piped fluids, then use a heat exchanger to transfer it to a building’s ventilation system. In warm months, the same process can cool buildings by sending excess heat underground.

Such systems are gaining momentum as a solution for individual homes and even large campuses. But Charkoudian and others want utilities to run pipelines to create thermal energy networks through towns and cities, taking advantage of an existing workforce and rate structure.

Charkoudian is drafting a bill that would allow gas utilities to build networked geothermal systems, focused first on marginalized communities. She expects to introduce the measure next year.

“When you combine super-efficient ground-source heating and cooling with a networked system, you get the most efficient way possible to heat and cool an entire neighborhood,” she said.

Such networks, she noted, also could allow high-energy users like data centers to transfer “waste heat” to nearby buildings that need it.

The push in Maryland follows a law passed in New York last year to establish a regulatory structure for thermal energy networks. New York lawmakers also voted overwhelmingly this year to expand the drilling depth for such systems below 500 feet, which backers argued was necessary to install them in dense neighborhoods.

Earlier this year, Framingham, Massachusetts, broke ground on the first utility-run geothermal network pilot project in the country.

And in Vermont, lawmakers hope to advance next year a proposal to create a regulatory structure for such thermal energy networks. As just one gas utility covers a third of the state’s area, the bill would also allow such networks to be managed by towns, nonprofits or homeowners associations.

In addition to lowering emissions, backers say the bill could help with heating prices, as rising fuel costs are a major concern in a state where nearly half of residents rely on heating oil.

“There are ways to build local [geothermal] wells and have communities own and operate their own local energy supply,” said Debbie New, lead coordinator with the Vermont Community Geothermal Alliance. “There are municipalities that are interested and saying they really need this bill to pass in order to move forward.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

New Jersey requires schools to incorporate climate change lessons into almost all subject areas, not just science class (Photo by bestdesigns/iStock Images).

When wildfires and smoke swept through Oregon in 2020, Lyra Johnson’s family made plans to evacuate their home near Portland. Johnson, then 14, was told she might have to quickly learn to drive — despite not having a license — in order to get her grandmother to safety.

Thankfully, the danger passed before Johnson was forced to take the wheel, but she came face-to-face with the realities of climate change. Johnson, now 17 and a senior at Lake Oswego High School, was among the student leaders who urged Oregon lawmakers this year to require climate change education across all grade levels in Oregon schools.

“It’s really important to integrate that when you’re young, so you have that knowledge and feel like you can make a difference, rather than having it thrown on you and feel like the world’s ending,” she said.

Johnson serves as president of her school’s Green Team, a student sustainability group, and helped establish a composting program this year to reduce waste.

Virginia students are pushing for fossil fuel divestment. Universities say it’s complicated.

“It gave me a lot of hope, and it’s important to let students have that kind of hands-on experience,” she said. “When you’re actually doing something and seeing progress, it can diminish a lot of that anxiety. Kids should be able to have that experience wherever they are.”

The Oregon bill did not advance this session, but New Jersey last school year became the first state to incorporate climate change lessons into its education standards for kindergarten through 12th grade. Connecticut will be the second state to do so, starting next month.

Several other states are considering similar measures, while some have provided funding for climate learning opportunities. Most states have adopted standards that include climate change, but education experts say the subject is taught spottily and is usually limited to science classes. Some educators say there’s growing recognition that climate change demands a more comprehensive approach.

“Today’s students are tomorrow’s consumers, workers and voters,” said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, an Oakland, California-based nonprofit. “Increasingly, they’re going to be faced with the need to make decisions about issues related to climate change.”

Efforts to require climate change learning have mostly been proposed in progressive-leaning states. Some observers have questioned whether efforts to set learning standards via legislation could clash with the typical multiyear process overseen by state boards of education.

Meanwhile, leaders in some conservative states say mainstream climate science is an attack on the fossil fuel industry, and some are pushing schools to teach “both sides.”

“What I think is controversial is different views that exist out there about the extent of the climate change and the solutions to try to alter climate change,” Ohio state Rep. Jerry Cirino, a Republican, told Energy News Network.

The Oregon bill Johnson and others supported would have directed school districts to teach climate change with a focus on local impacts and solutions. Backers said lawmakers were generally supportive but wanted to see a more specific plan with guidance and resources to help schools to meet the new directive. The bill did not get a vote in committee, but supporters hope a new draft will pass in the next legislative session.

Breck Foster, one of Johnson’s teachers, serves as a board member for Oregon Green Schools, a nonprofit focused on climate education and sustainability. She’s found ways to incorporate climate learning into her social studies and Spanish classes.

“Kids understand the gloom and doom, and there’s a lot of fatalism in their comments, but they don’t have a lot of the facts,” said Foster, who also serves on the steering committee of Oregon Educators for Climate Education, a group that pushed for the bill. “It was very enlightening to them to connect it to the idea of policies that are being implemented and goals that are being set.”

New Jersey goes first

New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy led the push for the state’s new standards, which were adopted in 2020 by the state Board of Education. She said kids already see the effects of climate change, citing the wildfires in Canada earlier this month that blanketed the Northeast in smoke.

“Our children are seeing this as much as we are,” she said in an interview with Stateline. “To put our heads in the sand and pretend that the sky is not orange — they understand that.”

New Jersey requires schools to incorporate climate change lessons into almost all subject areas, not just science class, because “students have different ways of learning and every student has a favorite class,” Murphy said.

To help schools meet the new guidelines, the state has created lesson plans and professional development for teachers, and is offering millions of dollars in grants to support hands-on learning. The state established those resources in partnership with groups such as Sustainable Jersey, a nonprofit network that certifies municipalities and schools on sustainability standards.

Those tools, said Randall Solomon, Sustainable Jersey’s executive director, were just as important as the standards themselves.

“You can’t just wave a magic wand and expect 150,000 teachers and 2,500 schools to coordinate to teach climate change,” he said. “To really enable them to do it well requires the development of resources and tools, training and a way to track progress.”

Next month, Connecticut schools also will be required to teach climate change to all grade levels, following the enactment of a state law last legislative session.

“Every single kid I talk to and work with, this is what’s No. 1 on their minds, this is the existential crisis of their lifetimes,” said state Rep. Christine Palm, a Democrat who sponsored the measure, which was tucked into a larger budget bill.

Including solutions

Several other states, including California, Massachusetts and New York, are considering bills that would require more climate change learning in public schools.

“This is a very important topic, and I want to make sure this is happening throughout the state and not only in some regions,” said Massachusetts state Rep. Danillo Sena, a Democrat who has sponsored a bill to include climate change in state learning standards.

Sena said he is hopeful that the bill will receive a hearing this year.

Other states, including Maine and Washington, have provided funding to support professional development and training opportunities for educators on climate issues.

The Center for Green Schools, a project of the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council that
promotes and certifies sustainable buildings, released a report last week on the importance of climate change education.

Anisa Heming, the center’s director, noted that many youth leaders have become powerful advocates on climate change, and many of today’s students will need to fill jobs in emerging fields such as clean energy.

“Kids have a tendency to disengage if they don’t have a sense that there are solutions, that they have some power in the situation and the adults around them are acting,” she said. “We have to arm them with the solutions, and then we have to act ourselves so they can see that those solutions are serious.”

Climate skeptics

Leaders in some states, though, want to push climate change education in another direction. Cirino, the Ohio lawmaker, has proposed a bill that would “allow and encourage students to reach their own conclusions” on issues like climate change.

Cirino did not respond to a Stateline request for comment.

And in Texas, the state Board of Education directed schools earlier this year to provide textbooks that portray “positive” aspects of fossil fuels and suggest rising temperatures are caused by natural cycles, Scientific American reported. Board member Patricia Hardy, who drafted the rules, told the publication that fossil fuels help fund Texas schools and said teachers shouldn’t “just be presenting one side.”

Hardy did not respond to a request for comment.

Twenty states follow Next Generation Science Standards developed by a consortium of states and education groups, which do address climate change, most often in science classes. Another 24 states have enacted similar standards of their own. But the six outlier states include Florida and Texas, with massive amounts of students.

Branch, with the science education group, said the standards are taught inconsistently, often because teachers themselves have not had courses on climate change. That leaves most students well short of the comprehensive climate change education now required in New Jersey.

Leaders in New Jersey say their first school year under the new requirements has been a success, though some teachers aren’t yet totally comfortable. They hope the state’s standards, along with the resources it’s drafted to help schools adapt, can provide a template for others.

“I am desperate to get other states to join us,” said Murphy, New Jersey’s first lady. “It’s great that the next generation of New Jersey students are going to own this space, but we’re not going to solve climate change on our own.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.