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Nearly one in three Americans woke up to air quality alerts on Wednesday as smoke from the Canadian wildfires billowed across the eastern United States. The choking cloud stretches from Maine to South Carolina and as far east as Minnesota, smothering Boston, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis. And with AQIs topping 160, Detroit and New York City had the second and third worst air quality, respectively, of any major cities in the world on Wednesday morning.
Wildfire smoke is dangerous to breathe — so dangerous that New York City is urging at-risk residents to wear N95 or KN95 masks outdoors and public schools across the tri-state area have canceled all outdoor activities. Unfortunately, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Here is your smokecast for the coming days:
Smoke is expected to continue to linger through the end of the week with the city extending its air quality alert through Friday. More immediately, New Yorkers can expect the haze to worsen on Wednesday afternoon, especially after 2 p.m., and potentially thicken into the night.
\u201cAnother wave of dense wildfire smoke is moving into Pennsylvania and will arrive in #NYC later today. The smoke can easily be seen from space and will cause air quality to worsen: https://t.co/9gYYEKWUaj\u201d— Breaking Weather by AccuWeather (@Breaking Weather by AccuWeather) 1686144065
Air quality is “expected to remain poor” on Thursday since a low-pressure front off the coast of Maine is ushering Canadian smoke into the tri-state area region. The Fox Weather models also show “a lot of smoke for the Northeast all the way through Friday” and Accuweather expects that by Saturday, “winds may send some smoke farther east once again.”
A weekend storm could finally break the chokehold the smoke has over the east: “By Sunday night we should start to see improvement as a new storm system from the west” changes the wind direction, a Fox meteorologist told the New York Post.
\u201cNo relief for NYC & much of the northeast Wednesday. Flow around a low will continue to funnel thick smoke from the Canadian wildfires & blanket the area with extensive haze & terrible air quality. #18StormTracker #nywx #pawx #njwx\u201d— Trackerman \u26a1\ufe0f (@Trackerman \u26a1\ufe0f) 1686142190
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Being closer to the Canadian border, upstate New York has seen some of the most eye-popping AQI readings of the current smoke event:
\u201cSadly the horrific air quality forecasts were right. A \u201chazardous\u201d plume of dense smoke is sliding south across Lake Ontario. Syracuse already AQI of 351 and on the Canadian side of the lake an AQI value of 421!!! The highest I\u2019ve ever seen on the East Coast.\u201d— Bill Karins \ud83d\udca7 (@Bill Karins \ud83d\udca7) 1686146535
The local Minor League Baseball team, the Syracuse Mets, called off a Tuesday night game against the Lehigh Valley IronPigs and postponed a Wednesday day game to the evening in the hopes the air will be clearer later in the day. They may be left waiting. According to Syracuse.com, “The weather pattern should begin to shift Thursday, bringing winds from the west instead of the north and clearing the air in Upstate New York by the weekend.” Rain in the next few days, though, could help alleviate some of the worst pollution.
\u201c\u2757\ufe0f\ud83d\ude37Air Quality Warning for the Upstate this afternoon...\n\nAn enormous plume of smoke from ongoing Canadian wildfires is getting carried by upper-level winds into the Upstate and WNC.\n\nPlease take frequent breaks if you need to be outdoors this afternoon.\u201d— Griffin Hardy WYFF 4 (@Griffin Hardy WYFF 4) 1686146980
The low-pressure system off of Maine will keep smoke funneling toward the tri-state area for a few days yet, but it offers some protection for northeastern New England. Though it was smoky on Wednesday morning, forecasts show that the smoke will start to thin by Wednesday afternoon:
\u201cThis gives a good idea of the main steering current for the smoke plumes...a stuck upper-level low drifting across northern New England\n\nSince the flow around low pressure is counterclockwise in the NH, smoke rotates around it in the same fashion\u201d— Eric Fisher (@Eric Fisher) 1686102537
It’d have been a “gorgeous” day in D.C. if it “weren’t for the smoke,” The Washington Post reported Wednesday morning. A Code Orange air quality alert was in effect — the first since 2016 — with smoke expected to worsen in the Capital Region on Wednesday night.
There is also the potential for a Code Red alert on Thursday, which is issued when smoke conditions are unhealthy for all groups and the AQI is over 150. Potential showers on Friday could help suppress pollutants.
\u201cVisibility is down to 2 MILES in D.C. amid extreme wildfire smoke.\u201d— Matthew Cappucci (@Matthew Cappucci) 1686142679
Relief from the smoke is expected to come for the seaboard states by the end of the week … but only because the weather patterns will push smoke toward their western neighbors. On Thursday and Friday, air quality could become worse in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Detroit, Accuweather reports.
\u201cCANADA WILDFIRE SMOKE CAUSING UNHEALTHY AIR QUALITY:\n\nWe don\u2019t see air quality this bad in the Cleveland area very often. The smoke will be coming in waves of heavier plumes over the next few days. @cleveland19news\u201d— Kelly Dobeck \u2600\ufe0f (@Kelly Dobeck \u2600\ufe0f) 1686143307
The movement of smoke is famously tricky to predict, but there are
a few different models you can use to keep an eye on your area. Here are the models for the next day from the FireSmoke Canada website, which tracks PM2.5 smoke particles at ground level from wildfires across North America. Check the FireSmoke Canada website or NOAA models for the most up-to-date forecasts and keep in mind that, like forecasting the weather, these are not guarantees. Err on the side of caution and protect yourself.
The model for 2 p.m. on June 7. Darker colors indicate higher PM2.5 levels, the particles associated with wildfire smoke. The numbered circles refer to the number of regional wildfires.FireSmoke Canada
The model for 9 p.m. on June 7.FireSmoke Canada
The model for 9 a.m. on June 8.FireSmoke Canada
The model for 9 p.m. on June 8.FireSmoke Canada
Read more about the wildfire smoke engulfing the eastern United States:
Your Plants Are Going to Be Okay.
Why Are the Canadian Wildfires So Bad This Year?
How to Stay Safe from Wildfire Smoke Indoors
Wildfire Smoke Is a Wheezy Throwback for New York City
Wednesday Was the Worst Day for Wildfire Pollution in U.S. History
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The nonprofit laid off 36 employees, or 28% of its headcount.
The Trump administration’s funding freeze has hit the leading electrification nonprofit Rewiring America, which announced Thursday that it will be cutting its workforce by 28%, or 36 employees. In a letter to the team, the organization’s cofounder and CEO Ari Matusiak placed the blame squarely on the Trump administration’s attempts to claw back billions in funding allocated through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
“The volatility we face is not something we created: it is being directed at us,” Matusiak wrote in his public letter to employees. Along with a group of four other housing, climate, and community organizations, collectively known as Power Forward Communities, Rewiring America was the recipient of a $2 billion GGRF grant last April to help decarbonize American homes.
Now, the future of that funding is being held up in court. GGRF funds have been frozen since mid-February as Lee Zeldin’s Environmental Protection Agency has tried to rescind $20 billion of the program’s $27 billion total funding, an effort that a federal judge blocked in March. While that judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, called the EPA’s actions “arbitrary and capricious,” for now the money remains locked up in a Citibank account. This has wreaked havoc on organizations such as Rewiring America, which structured projects and staffing decisions around the grants.
“Since February, we have been unable to access our competitively and lawfully awarded grant dollars,” Matusiak wrote in a LinkedIn post on Thursday. “We have been the subject of baseless and defamatory attacks. We are facing purposeful volatility designed to prevent us from fulfilling our obligations and from delivering lower energy costs and cheaper electricity to millions of American households across the country.”
Matusiak wrote that while “Rewiring America is not going anywhere,” the organization is planning to address said volatility by tightening its focus on working with states to lower electricity costs, building a digital marketplace for households to access electric upgrades, and courting investment from third parties such as hyperscale cloud service providers, utilities, and manufacturers. Matusiak also said Rewiring America will be restructured “into a tighter formation,” such that it can continue to operate even if the GGRF funding never comes through.
Power Forward Communities is also continuing to fight for its money in court. Right there with it are the Climate United Fund and the Coalition for Green Capital, which were awarded nearly $7 billion and $5 billion, respectively, through the GGRF.
What specific teams within Rewiring America are being hit by these layoffs isn’t yet clear, though presumably everyone let go has already been notified. As the announcement went live Thursday afternoon, it stated that employees “will receive an email within the next few minutes informing you of whether your role has been impacted.”
“These are volatile and challenging times,” Matusiak wrote on LinkedIn. “It remains on all of us to create a better world we can all share. More so than ever.”
A battle ostensibly over endangered shrimp in Kentucky
A national park is fighting a large-scale solar farm over potential impacts to an endangered shrimp – what appears to be the first real instance of a federal entity fighting a solar project under the Trump administration.
At issue is Geenex Solar’s 100-megawatt Wood Duck solar project in Barren County, Kentucky, which would be sited in the watershed of Mammoth Cave National Park. In a letter sent to Kentucky power regulators in April, park superintendent Barclay Trimble claimed the National Park Service is opposing the project because Geenex did not sufficiently answer questions about “irreversible harm” it could potentially pose to an endangered shrimp that lives in “cave streams fed by surface water from this solar project.”
Trimble wrote these frustrations boiled after “multiple attempts to have a dialogue” with Geenex “over the past several months” about whether battery storage would exist at the site, what sorts of batteries would be used, and to what extent leak prevention would be considered in development of the Wood Duck project.
“The NPS is choosing to speak out in opposition of this project and requesting the board to consider environmental protection of these endangered species when debating the merits of this project,” stated the letter. “We look forward to working with the Board to ensure clean water in our national park for the safety of protection of endangered species.”
On first blush, this letter looks like normal government environmental stewardship. It’s true the cave shrimp’s population decline is likely the result of pollution into these streams, according to NPS data. And it was written by career officials at the National Park Service, not political personnel.
But there’s a few things that are odd about this situation and there’s reason to believe this may be the start of a shift in federal policy direction towards a more critical view of solar energy’s environmental impacts.
First off, Geenex has told local media that batteries are not part of the project and that “several voicemails have been exchanged” between the company and representatives of the national park, a sign that the company and the park have not directly spoken on this matter. That’s nothing like the sort of communication breakdown described in the letter. Then there’s a few things about this letter that ring strange, including the fact Fish and Wildlife Service – not the Park Service – ordinarily weighs in on endangered species impacts, and there’s a contradiction in referencing the Endangered Species Act at a time when the Trump administration is trying to significantly pare back application of the statute in the name of a faster permitting process. All of this reminds me of the Trump administration’s attempts to supposedly protect endangered whales by stopping offshore wind projects.
I don’t know whether this solar farm’s construction will indeed impact wildlife in the surrounding area. Perhaps it may. But the letter strikes me as fascinating regardless, given the myriad other ways federal agencies – including the Park Service – are standing down from stringent environmental protection enforcement under Trump 2.0.
Notably, I reviewed the other public comments filed against the project and they cite a litany of other reasons – but also state that because the county itself has no local zoning ordinance, there’s no way for local residents or municipalities opposed to the project to really stop it. Heatmap Pro predicts that local residents would be particularly sensitive to projects taking up farmland and — you guessed it — harming wildlife.
Barren County is in the process of developing a restrictive ordinance in the wake of this project, but it won’t apply to Wood Duck. So opponents’ best shot at stopping this project – which will otherwise be online as soon as next year – might be relying on the Park Service to intervene.
And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Dukes County, Massachusetts – The Supreme Court for the second time declined to take up a legal challenge to the Vineyard Wind offshore project, indicating that anti-wind activists' efforts to go directly to the high court have run aground.
2. Brooklyn/Staten Island, New York – The battery backlash in the NYC boroughs is getting louder – and stranger – by the day.
3. Baltimore County, Maryland – It’s Ben Carson vs. the farmer near Baltimore, as a solar project proposed on the former Housing and Urban Development secretary’s land is coming under fire from his neighbors.
4. Mecklenburg County, Virginia – Landowners in this part of Virginia have reportedly received fake “good neighbor agreement” letters claiming to be from solar developer Longroad Energy, offering large sums of cash to people neighboring the potential project.
5. York County, South Carolina – Silfab Solar is now in a bitter public brawl with researchers at the University of South Carolina after they released a report claiming that a proposed solar manufacturing plant poses a significant public risk in the event of a chemical emissions release.
6. Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi – Apex Clean Energy’s Bluestone Solar project was just approved by the Mississippi Public Service Commission with no objections against the project.
7. Plaquemine Parish, Louisiana – NextEra’s Coastal Prairie solar project got an earful from locals in this parish that sits within the Baton Rouge metro area, indicating little has changed since the project was first proposed two years ago.
8. Huntington County, Indiana – Well it turns out Heatmap’s Most At-Risk Projects of the Energy Transition has been right again: the Paddlefish solar project has now been indefinitely blocked by this county under a new moratorium on the project area in tandem with a new restrictive land use ordinance on solar development overall.
9. Albany County, Wyoming – The Rail Tie wind farm is back in the news again, as county regulators say landowners feel misled by Repsol, the project’s developer.
10. Klickitat County, Washington – Cypress Creek Renewables is on a lucky streak with a solar project near Goldendale, Washington, getting to bypass local opposition from the nearby Yakama Nation.
11. Pinal County, Arizona – A large utility-scale NextEra solar farm has been rejected by this county’s Board of Supervisors.