Future Ready Features: Resources and Ecology Edition

Balancing resource development, urbanization and environmental protection.

Wind power and wildlife

Wind power is a key opportunity in the transition to cleaner energy, which is essential to defend against the worst impacts of climate change. But so is the protection of biodiversity.

Unfortunately, those two things haven’t always worked in harmony, and wind turbines have been criticized for adverse effects on wildlife, like birds, bats, barracuda and beluga whales. Some of those issues have included collisions, habitat loss, displacement and noise pollution.

That said, context is important. The bird population, for instance, is at significantly greater risk from our changing climate — as well as other, more immediate threats like, say, house cats — than from wind farms. Nonetheless, we must always consider the potential impacts of resource development on critical ecology and continue innovating to reduce them.

Fortunately, wind power has come a long way and continues to improve. Advancements in turbine design and project planning combine to reduce the threat of these developments to wildlife. Some these include:

• Better project siting informed by species behavior and migratory patterns assessment and monitoring.
• Incorporation of colors and patterns on blades and on the ground around turbines to enhance visibility.
• “Bubble curtains,” which encircle an offshore wind turbine and creates a veil of bubbles to scatter sound waves and buffer noise.
• Technology and data, such as the Smart Whales initiative and Fish FORWRD database, which are monitoring the presence and movement of whales and cataloguing research around fisheries to better inform offshore development.

Learn more about how these and other innovations are helping create harmony between wind power and wildlife.

Urban development and stream sustainability

Development is putting our streams and creeks in an unhealthy situation.

The transition from natural to built environment, which introduces more hardscape and less pervious surface around watersheds, is contributing to the degradation of waterways and making them more susceptible to pollution, erosion and overflow. This ecological concern is called “urban stream syndrome” and it’s occurring more frequently as population growth demands more building, while climate change drives more frequent and intense weather events.

The symptoms of this environmental malady include:

• More frequent and rapid rise in stream flow.
• Elevated concentrations of nutrients and contaminants.
• Changes in channel morphography — or the shape, size and characteristics of a stream.
• Reduction in the number of species in the biological community.

As urban stream syndrome persists, agencies and communities are leveraging a variety of strategies to mitigate the problem and bring these waterways back to life. These include strategic planning to balance land development and environmental conservation; municipal ordinance updates to include protectional provisions; holistic watershed management planning to reduce pollution and protect biodiversity; and providing communities with education about the issue.

Learn more about the importance of centering water stewardship and stream restoration as an essential element of sustainable water quality and flood control planning.

Coal ash and groundwater protection

Coal combustion products, or CCPs (a.k.a. coal ash) are residues created from burning coal to produce energy. In the U.S. alone, coal-fired plants produce more than 100 million tons of CCPs each year.

This waste is disposed of in various ways, including landfills, surface impoundments, recycling into products like concrete and aluminum alloy, and into waterways via discharge permits. Because CCPs contain soluble salts such as calcium and sulfur, as well as arsenic, cadmium and mercury, they threaten groundwater if not properly managed.

Recognizing this concern, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published a rule in 2015, establishing requirements for CCP landfills and surface impoundments that address the risks from coal ash disposal. Additionally, innovations are being advanced to mitigate the environmental impacts of these residues through corrective measures at CCP sites.

Specifically, geochemical modeling and simulation can help us understand and predict different conditions for transport and remediation of inorganic constituents at CCP sites. Based on this understanding, geochemical processes can be implemented that impact the way chemical components move through sub-surface aquifers.

This first-of-its-kind report, sponsored by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) as part of its CCP Land and Groundwater Management program, details these processes and is available at no cost for funding members.

Maintenance dredging and wetlands restoration

The navigable waters of the U.S. are an essential element of our society. Not only do they have cultural and historic significance, and support recreation, trade, manufacturing and agriculture, they are central to the efficient operation of ports — a key driver of the global economy — and, more recently, serve the emerging offshore wind industry.

Maintenance of these waterways requires periodic dredging to remove sediment build-up. And while necessary, dredging can have negative impacts on natural habitats, ecosystems, water quality and more. So, finding opportunities to support ecological uplift while sustaining these waterways is a win-win.

One such opportunity lies in the beneficial reuse of dredged material. This “waste” resource can provide a wide range of mutually beneficial scenarios for the environment, including beach nourishment, borrow pit restoration and brownfield reconstruction. A particularly compelling application is the restoration of degraded wetlands.

Wetlands provide a variety of ecosystem services — including natural water treatment, flood protection and erosion control, carbon sequestration and wildlife habitat — however, many have been severely impacted by industry, development and inundation from sea level rise. Where feasible, placement of dredged materials at these sites may help reverse these impacts and elevate ecological function.

Here is a relevant example of holistic thinking that supports both resource development and wetland restoration on a large scale — a true win-win.