Mississippi receives 6 8 million in federal funds to clean up orphaned wells / Public News Service

New federal funding will help bolster Mississippi’s efforts to track down, clean up and tackle pollution from orphaned oil and gas wells.

The Department of the Interior recently allocated $37 million in initial formula grants from President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda to Kentucky, Mississippi and Missouri to address legacy pollution.

Jess New, executive director of the Mississippi Oil and Gas Board, said the state will continue plugging and repairing orphaned well sites with every dollar provided through Phase Two of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

“We were just awarded another $6.8 million through the formula grant phase,” New pointed out. “With those funds, we are in the process now of actively locating, identifying and characterizing orphan well sites, orphan well project sites that we will move to plug and remediate and restore.”

New noted Mississippi received an initial $5 million grant to plug and remediate wells last year. More than 41 projects, including plugging operations at 15 well sites and surface restoration efforts at 26 others, were completed.

New stressed the funding will also open new employment opportunities for Mississippians.

“What this orphan program also does, it enables us to put contractors to work in the field plugging and remediating these sites,” New explained. “As we continue to add project sites to our orphan well list, we will certainly be hiring third-party contractors to plug and remediate those sites.”

New emphasized the importance of plugging orphan oil and gas wells as it reduces methane emissions and protects and safeguards groundwater and surface water from potential contamination.

“The abandoned and orphaned infrastructure has been out there for a long period of time,” New acknowledged. “It’s a safety hazard. And so by us going out there and removing the infrastructure, and just the salvage that might be on site, we are also getting, we’re removing a potentially very unsafe hazard on these sites.”

New emphasized the board’s focus for the next five years will be to identify and address orphan wells as part of its strategic plan. He added they will also continue to regulate the industry and promote exploration and production daily.

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More than 3 million acres of public lands in southeastern Oregon are poised for enhanced management by the Bureau of Land Management.

The BLM is seeking public comment on a draft Environmental Impact Statement released last week to amend the 2003 Lakeview Resource Management Plan for Lake and Harney counties.

Renee Patrick, a small-business owner, hiker, and steward of the Oregon Desert Trail, said the area needs more TLC as a gateway to the local outback.

“Not only to recreation but to the sagebrush steppe habitat,” Patrick urged. “So the ecosystem and the animals that live there and the plants — and especially the dark night sky — now that it’s part of the dark night sky sanctuary.”

The Oregon Outback International Dark Sky Sanctuary is the largest dark sky reserve in the world. The proposed plan promises to deliver management balancing wildlife conservation, watersheds and wild lands with continued multiple use of public lands.

The BLM’s amendment will consider a wide range of oversight options for lands with wilderness characteristics, grazing and outdoor recreation, including off-highway vehicle use.

Karl Findling, owner of Oregon Pack Works in Bend, said Lake County is one of the fastest-warming counties in the country and is taking the brunt of climate change.

“That landscape is in some dire need of being protected and having some alternate uses,” Findling argued. “So much in the desert needs an extra hand, and the federal government plays a part in that.”

Findling noted Oregon’s southeastern landscapes are vast and dramatic.

“They are havens for pronghorn and sage-grouse,” Findling pointed out. “As we know, sage-grouse are in decline — about 80% since I was born — so there’s some real diversity out there that also is home to bighorn sheep.”

During the 90-day comment period, the BLM plans to host an in-person public meeting in Lakeview and two virtual public meetings to answer questions about the plan.

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With hurricane season underway, South Carolina’s 344,000 acres of salt marshes are the first line of defense for the state’s lowcountry against storm surge – but only if they stay healthy.

As climate change drives Atlantic storms to higher frequency and intensity, environmental scientists have developed plans to protect the salt marshes. Brita Jessen, interdisciplinary research and partnerships lead for the South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative, said it’s crucial to protect the state’s coastal wetlands.

“Salt marshes help reduce the impact of flooding,” she said. “Because they can absorb some of that excess water that’s coming up into our infrastructure, they can hold in and kind of contain that water, and that’s a really important impact to our communities, and way of life as well.”

Jessen said the marshes not only protect the lowcountry from flooding and erosion but also provide a rich habitat for plants and animals. Scientists and government agencies have developed the South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative plan to protect the region’s salt marsh ecosystem.

South Carolina has the largest network of salt marshes on the Atlantic coast, greatly increasing habitat for aquatic life. Jessen said the salt marshes act as both a natural and an economic buffer, providing almost $700,000 of value per mile by reducing the impacts of storm surge and flooding.

“The most important part is that it’s providing an area of friction that is able to attenuate the amount of energy coming into a coastal area from the storm,” she said. “There’s a lot of wind and wave energy.”

Developers of the Salt Marsh Initiative have said the plan has two main strategies: to protect and restore the existing salt marshes, and to conserve habitat and migration corridors.

Denise Sanger, a senior scientist at the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, said officials need to develop better ways to guard against sea-level rise.

“So we’ve got to have a healthy marsh and sediment coming onto it for them to keep up with sea-level rise onto it,” she said, “and I don’t think we have as good of a handle on the expanses that we have and how well each one of them will respond.”

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At least 10% of Arizona’s population lives in rural areas, and a new report shows a significant portion of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions originate there.

A Rural Climate Partnership report found 36% of U.S. emissions are produced in rural America.

Maria Doerr, program manager for the Rural Climate Partnership and co-author of the report, said the emission effects of rural America are disproportionately large for the population they represent. Emissions are created by the goods and services produced in rural places, like electricity, which are then sent to urban and suburban communities.

For rural communities, it means air pollution among other environmental damage. She argued achieving the nation’s climate goals will take a sharper focus on rural areas.

“That is why we need rural communities to be the leaders of change for themselves because solutions will not work if they come from out-of-state or from the coastal cities,” Doerr contended. “Solutions must be coming from rural communities and when they do, they can both address climate issues and reduce emissions.”

Doerr emphasized rural messengers are critical for communicating the potential benefits of clean energy development such as new local jobs as well as opportunities for tax and land lease revenue, which can help farms stay in business. She added while climate action has been moved forward thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, a portion of which have funds stipulated for rural places, the work must continue.

Despite being one of the sunniest states in the nation, Arizona ranks 22nd nationally in the production of renewable energy. An estimated 67% of combustion power plant emissions in Arizona come from rural regions.

Doerr stressed rural communities have not been prioritized in efforts to help them harness the benefits of energy efficiency and electrification.

“I’m hopeful about opportunities to help those rural communities lead for themselves to create changes,” Doerr said. “Like bringing in more clean energy projects that create local jobs, that increase grid resiliency and reduce energy costs.”

Doerr added rural households spend 25%, or just over $450 more annually on household energy than their nonrural counterparts. Doer explained it is due in large part to the energy sources used in more remote places.

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