Environmental Justice – Water Policy Consulting LLC

Get Hal Shepherd’s new book “Return to Ekeunick’s Time – Defending Waters and Tradition in the Arctic”

One of the primary motivations

behind the campaign for Alaska’s statehood was the impact of large canneries on salmon that used fish traps and wheels to drain returning runs. At the same time, due to the lack of the Territory’s regulatory authority and because federal authorities were under the control of corporate interests, these canneries avoided paying taxes and laws to protect the fishery.

Return to Ekunick’s Time looks at how, as the 49th state to enter the union, Alaska had the benefit of observing the mistakes made by other states that were beginning to experience environmental degradation due to industrial extraction. As such, in the early years after statehood, the State was a leader in creating and enforcing environmental policy which, together with the emerging activism of Alaska Native communities, played a part in the birth of the nationwide environmental movement.

Eventually, however, the lure of the riches, particularly from the discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, became too much for Alaska’s political leadership, and over the past 50 years, the extraction industry has dominated state policies. Today, under a series of conservative politicians in power at both the federal and state levels (as championed particularly by the former Trump administration), resource extraction corporations are once again having substantial impacts on water and subsistence resources relied upon by Alaska Native communities.

At the same time, after a campaign led by powerful industrial interests and conservative politicians to discredit the environmental movement, today tribal leaders and everyday citizens in Alaska are hailing a new era of protecting water resources by emphasizing traditional values and management strategies in the face of existential threats from climate change and politics. According to Alaska Native author William Oquilluck, during the time of Ekeunick – the legendary leader of the Inupiat people in ancient times – “the Eskimo’s ancestors did not use their minds like later times when they invented tools, clothes, houses, boats, and weapons. They had no worries about living.”

Could the return to traditional values as a means of addressing the impacts of climate change and mismanagement of natural resources, help to move the needle towards a return to times when Alaska Native people will no longer have to worry about the survival of their traditions and culture?

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Kachemak Bay Watershed Collaborative

The Chugach Regional Resource Commission (CRRC) is an Alaska Native Tribal consortium in south-central Alaska whose Dena’ina, Alutiiq, and Sugpiaq villages and association members have stewarded of the Kachemak Bay watershed for over 10,000 years. CRRC’s mission is to promote Tribal sovereignty and protect subsistence lifestyles through the development and implementation of Tribal natural resource management programs to assure conservation and sustainable economic development in the traditional use area of the Chugach Region.

CRRC serves the greater Chugach region of Southcentral Alaska, including Lower Cook Inlet, Resurrection Bay, and Prince William Sound. Within Lower Cook Inlet CRRC will work with area member tribes to establish the Kachemak Bay Watershed Collaborative (Collaborative or KBWC) to protect salmon streams located within the Kachemak Bay Watershed (Watershed). The Athabascan and Sugpiaq communities located within the Watershed rely on a subsistence economy, as they have since time immemorial.

CRRC will engage a diverse group of stakeholders with land ownership or authority within the Watershed, including Federally recognized Tribal entities, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Alaska Departments of Natural Resources and Fish and Game, the municipalities of Homer, Kachemak Selo, Voznesenka and Razdolna, Seldovia and the unincorporated Native village communities of Nanwalek and Port Graham, and conservation organizations.

Many changes related to warming fresh and marine water temperatures impact the subsistence resources. Increasingly common drought conditions and spruce beetle outbreaks in the region threaten the health of the plants and animals rural communities rely upon for subsistence. These changes are happening at a rate no one thought possible even a decade ago. Land management activity within the Watershed can exacerbate such impacts. The Collaborative will work to be more inclusive of tribal and other local communities along with local, state, and federal stakeholders in monitoring, planning, and decision-making within the Watershed. The implementation of risk assessments and planning documents, along with preserving connectivity and non-climate stressor mitigation actions, will ensure better protection and management of salmon habitat in the Watershed.

Project location

The 4,926,794-acre Watershed is made up of five small watersheds located in the Kenai Peninsula Borough within the state of Alaska and encompasses the municipalities of Homer, Kachemak Selo, Voznesenka, Razdolna, Seldovia, and the unincorporated Alaska Native village communities of Nanwalek and Port Graham. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) Hydrologic Unit Codes (HUC) in which the group will work are: Cook Inlet, Stariski Creek-Frontal Cook Inlet, Fox River, Sheep Creek and Quiet Creek-Frontal Kachemak Bay Watershed HUC ID #s: 1902080000, 1902030108, 1902030110, 1902030109 and 1902030111 respectively.

Technical project description

There is currently is no group focused specifically on this Watershed, although a diverse array of stakeholders, including livestock grazers, tourist and recreation groups, industry, environmental organizations, recreation advocates, universities, land use, tribal, state and federal entities, municipalities and the general public utilize the area. This Watershed group will also help fill a planning gap left by the elimination of Alaska’s Coastal Zone Management program.

There are several ongoing or previous watershed planning activities, projects, or efforts related to the Watershed that the Collaborative will build upon, including:

The Kachemak Bay Fox-River Climate Risk Assessment analyzes current threats to salmon habitat within a portion of the Watershed, addresses salmon habitat connectivity and climate resiliency for the entire Watershed, and works with federal and state resource agencies to enter into cooperative agreements for management of salmon habitat on a watershed basis;
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game Fox River Flats Critical Habitat Area (FRFCHA) management plan addresses regulatory management goals for the FRFCHA and includes managing the area to 1) maintain and enhance fish and wildlife populations and their habitat; 2) minimize the degradation and loss of habitat values due to fragmentation, and; 3) recognize cumulative impacts when considering effects of small incremental developments and action affecting critical habitat resources.
The Kachemak Heritage Land Trust’s (KHLT) Krishna Venta Conservation Management Plan addresses working collaboratively with state, federal, and local entities as KHLT purchases and negotiates conservation easements on private lands for the purposes of management and protection of fish and wildlife habitat of KHLT’s 160 acres in the FRFCHA;
The Kenai Mountains To Sea – Land Conservation Strategy to Sustain Our Way of Life on the Kenai Peninsula calls for the creation of contiguous “green” corridors along 20 inter-jurisdictional anadromous streams, most of which originate on the Kenai Refuge. Such protection will increase the resiliency of these streams and the marine habitat into which they feed from the effects of a rapidly warming climate while ensuring that large piscivores such as brown bears and wolves persist to transport marine derived nutrients onto the landscape;
The Department of Natural Resources’ Kachemak Bay State Park and Kachemak Bay State Wilderness Park Management Plan addresses management of the 371,000- acre Kachemak Bay State Park and Kachemak Bay State Wilderness Park (State Park);
The Cook Inlet Keeper State of the Inlet watershed restoration plan within the Watershed captures threats and community-specific concerns and ideas to help direct CIK’s watershed-based organization as the plan future projects.

Join the Collaborative:

If you are a federal, state, or tribal entity, conservation group, or anyone else interested in the welfare and sustainability of Kachemak Bay, please join our Collaborative. If you have any questions please contact Hal Shepherd halshepherdwpc@gmail.com

Reversing Trump’s Environmental Policies Under a Biden Administration will be a Tall Order

This year’s presidential election was a close race in a handful of states. When the Associated Press announced that, for just the second time in 70 years, with the help from the Native vote, announced a decisive win for Democrat Joe Biden announced an ambitious Indian Policy as part of his campaign, over President Trump on November 7, 2020. This was partly due to record turnout throughout the country, including pivotal votes from Native Americans in key states. As of 2018, the state of Arizona alone which turned from red to blue this election cycle, members of federally recognized tribes made almost 6% of the population and the Navajo Nation alone contains around 67,000 eligible voters.

The question on everyone’s mind is whether a Biden win will end Trump’s war on the environment. If the democrats do not become the majority party in the senate, in order to stay on track with his environmental agenda, Biden will need to rely primarily on executive actions and essential legislative measures like tax reform, the federal budget and the Farm Bill. Just hours after the United States officially withdrew from the Paris accord, on the day after the election, for example, Biden announced that he would reverse that decision on the first day of his term in office.

During his candidacy, Biden also pledged to reverse several of Trump’s Alaska initiatives including drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and issuing a permit to develop the Pebble Mine. Also, in relation to Alaska Native Tribes Biden plans to create a new division of the Justice Department that will focus on environmental and climate justice and to incorporate environmental justice throughout EPA programs.

The key will be how hard will the Trump administration push for completion of it’s resource extraction agenda before he leaves office on January 20. Although, The Trump administration recently issued a request to energy companies to identify what specific land areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be offered for sale, this will be difficult due to the remaining environmental analysis, leasing logistics and the fact that global banks continue to adopt policies stating that they will not fund drilling in the Arctic due to climate change. And there’s also the fact that many of the Trump administrations decisions affecting BLM lands, including ANWR and the NPRA leasing were made by Scott Pendly who has been serving illegally as the Director of the Bureau of Land Management for the past 14 months.

Never one to let a small thing like the law get in the way of opening lands up to resource extraction activity however, Trump could simple move to put leases in ANWR and open up areas to mining, despite federal laws or even court orders to the contrary before leaving office. And then there’s the fact that Trump has not conceded the elections results to Biden and may not leave the Whitehouse at all.

Last Stand for the Tongass

The Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest in the United States, is a landscape comprised of old-growth Sitka spruce, western hemlock, and red and yellow cedar. These mighty trees, along with innumerable glacially-fed streams and lakes, give rise to all five species of Pacific salmon, humpback whales, healthy black and brown bear populations, wolves, and omnipresent bald eagles. Located in southeastern Alaska, the 17 million acre Tongass is the size of West Virginia and home to 70,000 people, including the First Nation people of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian, and the city of Juneau, Alaska’s state capital. It is also the largest expanse of roadless wilderness in the national forest system, at least for now.

Protected by the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule (signed into effect by President Bill Clinton), 55% of the Tongass, or 9.2 million acres, is off limits to road construction and timber sales. But, in January 2018, under Governor Bill Walker’s administration and with the backing of the Trump Administration, the State of Alaska petitioned the Secretary of Agriculture to consider exempting the Tongass from the Roadless Rule.

Under the federal National Environmental Policy Act, any consideration to exempt the Tongass from the Roadless Rule requires a 60-day public comment period and a scientific analysis of environmental impacts to the Tongas. The 60-day public comment period, conducted this summer, fell well short of its obligation according to tribal members who received last-minute notice of public meetings. In their opinion, the comment period “exemplifies the federal government’s long-running failure to adequately work with tribes.” In response, eleven southeast Alaskan tribes vested in the outcome of the upcoming ruling, filed a petition in July, requesting the USDA consult with tribes “on a government-to-government basis.” Earlier attempts by area tribes to engage in the two-year process were derailed because “the USDA repeatedly ignored their input and requests for in-person meetings; fast-traced seemingly arbitrary deadlines; and proceeded as usual despite a pandemic that has disproportionally hurt Native communities.”

The Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), was released on September 24, 2020 and analyzes six alternatives, including a no-action alternative. Trump-appointed USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue prefers Alternative 6 which “provides maximum additional timber harvest opportunities,” removing “all 9.37 million inventoried roadless acres on the Tongass from roadless designation.” Moreover, “Alternative 6 would revert a net total of 168,000 old growth-acres and 20,000 young-growth acres, previously identified as unsuitable timber lands, to suitable timber lands”. The Tongas will “continue to be managed by the Forest Plan and in accordance with applicable statutory instructions.” There is a 30-day waiting period following the release of the EIS prior to implementation to allow for review.

If you want to weigh in against opening up the Tongas, please see the following websites.

https://addup.sierraclub.org/campaigns/keep-alaskas-tongass-national-forest-roadless

https://act.nrdc.org/letter/tongass-forest-181004

Your voice matters.

Unflagging Opposition to Business-as-Usual Extraction Practices

With Present Trump rolling back one environmental policy after another, ongoing efforts to slow global warming, safeguard wilderness, and provide clean water and air can seem futile. But never doubt that a handful of thoughtful, committed lawsuits can change the world. Indeed, it may be the only recourse that can.

We need look no farther than the Gwich’in Native community for inspiration when it comes to fighting to protect the environment. For more than thirty years they have resisted attempts to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. Under Trump’s plan to open lease sales across the entire coastal plain, that fight has kicked into high gear. For the Gwich’in, the coastal plain, birthing grounds for the Porcupine caribou herd which numbers approximately 200,000, is sacred ground. Their culture, history and way of life revolve around the caribou and the 1.5 million-acre expanse of coastal lands. Sarah James, Gwich’in elder, explains, “We have a special connection in that we are a part of the caribou and the caribou are part of us. It is our language, our songs, our dance…. We take care of the caribou, and in return, they take care of us, and that’s really important to my people here.”

The Gwich’in Sterring Committee, along with several other plaintives including Canada’s Yukon chapter of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, filed a lawsuit in late August, seeking to overturn Trump’s approval for oil leasing, and siting violations of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and likely impacts to the Porcupine Caribou Herd.

A second lawsuit to halt oil leasing on the Refuge filed by The National Audubon Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth, and Center for Biological Diversity sight insufficient concern over increased greenhouse gas emissions and melting permafrost, poor air quality, and negative impacts to the region’s wildlife.

And most recently, a third lawsuit to overturn drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was filed on September 9th with the U.S. District Court in Anchorage by attorneys general for 15 states and led by Washington and Massachusetts. The lawsuit states that drilling will contribute to global climate change and its effects such as sea level rise and extreme weather events.

A number of other environmental legal battles continue in Alaska and Siberia. In North-western Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, Trump seeks to overthrow Obama-era safeguards by expanding development into regions of the Reserve long slated for protection. Two recent lawsuits are pushing back against expanded development in NPR-A oil leasing. The lawsuits are in response to the final environmental impact statement released by the Bureau of Land Management in June allowing oil leasing on 18.7 million acres in the 23-million-acre reserve, including drilling in Teshekpuk Lake. Teshekpuk is the largest lake on the North Slope and provides critical habitat for migratory waterfowl and shorebirds.

And while a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s reversal of restrictions on Pebble Mine was dismissed in US District Court, Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan has joined a growing rank of conservatives who are openly opposed to the Pebble mine project. The proposed gold, molybdenum and cooper mine, in South-central Alaska’s Lake and Peninsula region, is recognized as a threat to the nationally-significant Bristol Bay salmon fisheries. Following the release of secret recordings by Pebble executives, Sullivan stated in a tweet on September 24^th, “Let me be even more clear: I oppose Pebble Mine. No Pebble Mine.” This follows a surprise stipulation issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in late August to Dynasty Minerals Ltd requiring the mine owners to outline how they will offset damage to wetlands and any impacts to the Bristol Bay salmon fishery. Other conservatives who oppose the mine, at least as it is currently proposed, including Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, Donald Trump Junior and Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

In the southern part of the state, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, and other conservation groups including the Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan, lost lawsuits in federal district court and the Ninth Circuit court which sought to challenge federal permits issued to the Palmer mine project near Haines. The Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. obtained permits to build 2.5 miles of roads across U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands to access zinc, copper, gold and silver deposits. The lawsuit argued that BLM did not factor in future mining development at the Palmer mine and impacts on the 3,000 bald eagles and spawning salmon along the nearby Chilkat River.

In southeastern Alaska, the Trump administration is zeroing in on the Tongass National Forest, seeking to exclude this, the nation’s largest national forest, from the Clinton-era roadless rule. A much-disputed study by the U.S. Forest Service states that lifting protections “will not significantly harm the environment.” By year’s end, the Trump administration hopes to open vast tracts of pristine old growth forest to road construction and timber sales. Recent lawsuits blocking timber sales that failed to identify impacted areas, and for deficiencies in the review process have stalled the sales process several times. That pushback resulted in the Trump administration implementing the new roadless rule exemption.

Meanwhile, in the Russian far north, a lawsuit has been filed against Norilsk Nickle seeking 1.96 billion dollars in damages for a May 29^th fuel spill. The spill, blamed on melting permafrost, dumped 21,000 tons of diesel into the Ambarnaya and Daldykan rivers which feed into Lake Pyasino before emptying into the Arctic Ocean. The spill is one of the largest ever recorded in the Arctic and has been compared with Alaska’s 1989 ExxonValdez spill, in part because both spills coincided with the spring migration — just as birds and fish are returning to their natal grounds.

The one take-away the Gwich’in can offer in this legal playing field is don’t give up. The fights for the Coastal Plains, the Tongas, and the headwaters of Bristol Bay continue, one lawsuit at a time. For Gwich’in elder Sarah James it’s straight forward. “We’re not a nonprofit. We’re not a movement. We’re not a corporation. We’re a neets’aii Gwich’in tribal government, and that’s how we’re now taking on this issue, government-to-government, and we’re standing our ground.”

Lawsuits Filed on ANWR

Three lawsuits have been filed seeking to block the Trump administration’s efforts to sell oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The National Audubon Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth, and Center for Biological Diversity have signed off on a lawsuit sighting insufficient concern over increased greenhouse gas emissions and melting permafrost, poor air quality, and negative impacts to the region’s wildlife. The lawsuit alleges violations of the National Environmental Protection Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act, and the Endangered Species Act. A second lawsuit, filed by the Gwich’in Steering Committee also sites violations of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and includes plaintiffs in Canada’s Yukon chapter of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. Most recently, a third lawsuit was put forth by fifteen states including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Concerns addressed in this lawsuit include habitat damage and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as impacts to waterfowl hunting and a lucrative birdwatching industry for birds that breed on the Arctic plain and overwinter in the lower 48 states.

House Democrats Deliver an Ambitious Climate Action Plan

In mid-June, U.S. House Democrats released a comprehensive 538-page climate crisis action plan. The goal of the plan is to bring U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. The plan is built on the following 12 pillars:

Invest in Infrastructure to Build a Just, Equitable, and Resilient Clean Energy Economy
Drive Innovation and Deployment of Clean Energy and Deep Decarbonization Technologies
Transform U.S. Industry and Expand Domestic Manufacturing of Clean Energy and Zero-Emission Technologies
Break Down Barriers for Clean Energy Technologies
Invest in America’s Workers and Build a Fairer Economy
Invest in Disproportionately Exposed Communities to Cut Pollution and Advance Environmental Justice
Improve Public Health and Manage Climate Risks to Health Infrastructure
Invest in American Agriculture for Climate Solutions
Make U.S. Communities More Resilient to the Impacts of Climate Change
Protect and Restore America’s Lands, Waters, Ocean, and Wildlife
Confront Climate Risks to America’s National Security and Restore America’s Leadership on the International Stage
Strengthen America’s Core Institutions to Facilitate Climate Action

More specifically, from the perspective of water policy, the plan calls for “Water infrastructure resilience” standards to provide clean water and mitigate flooding, droughts and erosion. The plan also calls for the reduction of water pollution through the safe disposal of hazardous wastes from the oil and gas industry, and a recommendation to protect “at least 30% of all U.S. lands and ocean areas by 2030.”

To view the plan in its entirety, click here. To read more about the development and implementation of the plan click here and here.

Is Federal Disaster & Hazard Mitigation Aid Getting to Those Communities Most in Need?

In August 2020, National Public Radio’s Ted Talk broadcast an episode entitled “Our Relationship with Water” in which Colette Pichon Battle who is an attorney turned climate activist who grew up in Bayou Liberty just north of New Orleans.[1] She says she was thrown into her new role because rising sea levels, flooding and other climate factors are threatening the land that has been in her family for generations. Pichon-Battle says “’I work at the community level to make sure that black folks, poor folks and native folks are part of thia climate conversation’” including to communicate the policy and science of climate change to her neighbors and that the scientific community and policy makers listen to the traditional knowledge that the community can provide about the area.[2]

After Hurrican Katrina caused a tidal surge from the Gulf that swept her entire community into Lake Pontchartrain, she found that the surge was caused by sea level rise and the absence of barrier islands, now gone because of oil and gas drilling, which use to block such surges. Once she realized that hurricans like Katrina and likely worse are her to stay and in looking at flood maps of Lousiana she realized that her community along with other African American, Native American and impoverished communities would likely simply disappear before the end of the century. Quechon-Battle, notes that she was invited to the Whitehouse during the Obama administration to talk with the Federal Emergency Management Service, the agency primarily responsible for assisting communities with disaster and hazard mitigation preparedness in relation to flooding and other natural events, about how her community could obtain assistance to prepare for future flooding events. She says that during this conversation “the FEMA administrator said ‘I understand what your saying, but the FEMA regulations are’nt ment for the most vulnerable communities.’ The disaster assistance process for this country are ment for the middle class.” Despite the double take she made when she heard this statement she firmly believes that “This was an honest comment from FEMA. This is what you realize when you recognize that you recognize that the structures that are in place right now are absolutely not meant for me.”[3]

Arctic Native communities which have been experiencing increased permafrost melt, loss of sea ice, extreme weather events, flooding and erosion that may make current residences and settlements uninhabitable in the near future, no all to well about competition for limited federal disaster and hazard mitigation funding to defend against the inevitable march of climate change. In addition to what communities like Quechon-Battle’s experienced when approaching FEMA for help, in many cases, agencies require cost-benefit analysis, plans, environmental analysis, or other measures above and beyond analysis or strategies contained in Hazard Mitigation Plans (HMPs) or other plans before such communities qualify to apply for funds. Similarly, because standard arctic community HMPs do not contain a detailed cost-benefit analysis of natural hazards affecting water resources, such communities cannot obtain high rankings that larger cities can to qualify for competitive funding or other federal or state assistance needed to address such impacts. Finally, the villages cannot afford to hire consultants or even staff to conduct climate adaption planning on behalf of such communities to include more meaningful consideration of economic impacts and risks associated with coastal water resource management resiliency strategies, in order to move beyond the planning phase and into on the ground project implementation.

There is a need, therefore, to conduct economic risk-benefit and environmental analysis and otherwise close the gap between Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other governmental funding and technical assistance programs such so that North Bering Sea communities can implement on-the-ground projects that will address the Villages’ climate-related coastal water resources management challenges.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/899845219/our-relationship-with-water.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Bringing Water Justice to the Arctic

Responding to the current focus on anti-discrimination and the need to provide clean water to communities as a means of preventing infection and spread of the Pandemic, the decades old environmental justice and human right to water movements have combined to create new terminologies such as “Water Ethics” and “Water Justice.” House Democrats responded to the call by proposing a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill that would include everything from tax incentives for clean energy businesses, funding for drinking water programs and for climate resiliency upgrades to public housing. They hope to submit the bill to Congress by the 4^th of July holiday.

The need to shore up water infrastructure is even getting attention in the Arctic these days where, as part of the America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2020, the plan to expand and deepen the city of Nome’s port was recently approved by the Army Corp of part of Engineers. Because the purpose of the expansion is primarily to extend the harbor into Norton Sound and dredge the outer area so that it is deep enough to accommodate big vessels like fuel tankers and large cargo and cruise ships, it’s main effect will be to further open the Arctic to commerce and development. In their present form , therefore, both infrastructure bills are missing an opportunity to effectively respond to the Pandemic and increase climate resiliency by incorporating adequate water infrastructure for indigenous communities, including many Arctic Native communities who have never had running water.

It’s easy to imagine , for example, many of the Alaska Native communities who have never had access to running water, shaking their heads in response to recent federal and state health agency cries to “Wash Your Hands!.” According to water justice advocates, “more than 2 million Americans who lack indoor plumbing or wastewater services live in remote areas, or come from high-risk groups like the elderly, disabled, homebound and homeless.” Closing the access gap, therefore, should include the use of “existing disaster response protocols to close this access gap and prioritize communities where local capacity is limited. It should partner with state and local municipalities for both immediate and long-term solutions.”

Water ethics is also getting media attention these days in the form of the disproportionate impact of oil and gas development on Arctic Native communities as it relates to climate change. Last month, for example in the worst environmental disaster in Russian history, tons of water spilled into the Ambarnaya River in Siberia, due in part to rapidly melting permafrost at the Nornickel plant. As with so many industrial crises, the damage from the spill landed heaviest on the nearby indigenous peoples of the Taimyr Krasnoyarsk Territory.

In a bizarre twist on the water injustice of oil and gas drilling, however, the Alaska Delegation has managed to turn recent attention on the problem of discrimination on it’s head, by requesting that the federal government investigate recent global banking policies to forego loans and investments with companies that produce oil and other fossil fuels. Their argument? Such policies harm local Alaska Native communities who rely on drilling in the Arctic for jobs. Noticeably absent from the letter that Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan and Don Young sent to the comptroller of the currency and the chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp , however, is the discriminatory effects of carbon producing drilling activity on these same communities who rely on the unraveling fresh water and marine ecosystems in the rapidly heating Arctic for subsistence.

Still, our response to COVID-19 may provide an opportunity to address climate change in the Arctic. At least for now, airlines and other businesses are in slowdown around the globe and in some countries, CO2 emissions and air pollution are at their lowest in many years. To some extent, house democrats are using the opportunity provided by the Pandemic to address the need to convert to clean energy and focus on environmental justice by introducing climate change legislations which calls for net-zero CO2 emissions over the next 30 years and reducing pollution in communities that are disproportionately affected.

Why not go a step further and take the hint when Mother Nature is trying to send us a message? Could we, for example, use the opportunity from reduced travel and other CO2 emitting activities to switch to flying less, making a quicker switch to electric cars and focusing less on infrastructure that supports carbon producing industrial development, and more on providing water accessibility and applying nature-based solutions related to water issues?