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Sparks

A ‘Wedge’ of Saltwater Is Making Its Way Up the Mississippi

New Orleans’ drinking water is under threat.

New Orleans.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

For much of its history, the Mississippi River has been a churning mass of water, the collected output of a watershed that stretches across 32 American states and two Canadian provinces. Its power is unquestionable; when the Mississippi meets the Gulf of Mexico, the sheer force of the river keeps the saltwater of the Gulf from making its way upstream.

Except for right now. Drought in the central U.S. has made the Mississippi drop to near-record lows, and the Gulf of Mexico is encroaching upwards. A “wedge” of saltwater at the bottom of the river has been making its way upstream, threatening to inundate drinking water plants in and around New Orleans (CNN has a good graphic that shows what the wedge looks like). This is a big problem: As Colbi Edmonds reports in The New York Times, water treatment plants aren’t designed to handle water with high salinity levels, which can corrode pipes.

Governor Jon Bel Edwards of Louisiana has requested a federal emergency declaration, and Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans has already signed a city-level emergency declaration. The Army Corps of Engineers, meanwhile, is hard at work trying to raise an underwater sill it had built in the river back in July to protect against the saltwater; officials say they want to make the sill 25 feet higher, though even that will only serve to buy about 10 or 15 days rather than stop the saltwater altogether. The only thing that can really stop the saltwater is rain, and none is forecasted for the near future.

This isn’t the first time saltwater has made its way upriver (it also happened in 1988), but this is the second year in a row where drought has made the river’s water levels drop so dramatically. In 1988, the saltwater intrusion was solved with an unexpected burst of water on the river; this time around, officials think the problem could last until January. And if the drought continues into next year, it’s likely they’ll be facing the same problem then.

In the meantime, the Corps is also organizing barges to transport drinking water to New Orleans and the other communities that stand to be affected. In a press conference on Friday, Governor Edwards urged people not to stock up on drinking water; a representative of the Army Corps told CNN that it “fully anticipates the capability to meet the need of up to 36 million gallons per day that could be required.”

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Sparks

One Reason Trump Wants Greenland: Critical Minerals

The island is home to one of the richest rare earth deposits in the world.

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

A top aide to incoming President Donald Trump is claiming the president-elect wants the U.S. to acquire Greenland to acquire more rare minerals.

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Los Angeles fire destruction.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Los Angeles is on fire, and it’s possible that much of the city could burn to the ground. This would be a disaster for California’s already wobbly home insurance market and the residents who rely on it. Kettle Insurance, a fintech startup focused on wildfire insurance for Californians, thinks that it can offer a better solution.

The company, founded in 2020, has thousands of customers across California, and L.A. County is its largest market. These huge fires will, in some sense, “be a good test, not just for the industry, but for the Kettle model,” Brian Espie, the company’s chief underwriting officer, told me. What it’s offering is known as “parametric” insurance and reinsurance (essentially insurance for the insurers themselves.) While traditional insurance claims can take years to fully resolve — as some victims of the devastating 2018 Camp Fire know all too well — Kettle gives policyholders 60 days to submit a notice of loss, after which the company has 15 days to validate the claim and issue payment. There is no deductible.

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What the L.A. Fires Are Doing to the City’s Air

The Santa Ana winds are carrying some of the smoke out to sea.

Los Angeles during wildfires.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Wildfires have been raging across Los Angeles County since Tuesday morning, but only in the past 24 hours or so has the city’s air quality begun to suffer.

That’s because of the classic path of the Santa Ana winds, Alistair Hayden, a public health professor at Cornell who studies how wildfire smoke affects human health, told me. “Yesterday, it looked like the plumes [from the Palisades fire] were all blowing out to sea, which I think makes sense with the Santa Ana wind patterns blowing to the southwest,” Hayden said.

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