Amid driest conditions on record, New Mexico sweats every spark

Darla Sue Dollman 16 hours agoEnvironmentNature

New Mexico is a tinderbox ready to spark. In its third consecutive year of drought, the state is currently experiencing the warmest, driest conditions on record.

According to New Mexico state climatologist David DuBois, the trees, plants, and wildlife in more than 93 percent of the state are struggling to survive in extreme or exceptional drought conditions.

The combination of drought and triple-digit temperatures is creating fuels so dry that the smallest spark creates a flame, and minutes later another deadly inferno is raging in the Southwest.

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On June 30, 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a wildfire firefighting unit based in Prescott, Ariz., died working the front lines of a fire outside Yarnell, Ariz. The wind shifted suddenly, leaving them with little or no time to seek shelter. A few weeks earlier, the Granite Mountain Hotshots were in New Mexico fighting the Thompson Ridge Fire in the Jemez Mountains, alongside members of the Santa Fe Fire Department's Atalaya Hand Crew.

As firefighters mourn the loss of their friends, they continue to fight seven wildfires actively burning in New Mexico, while watching the skies for rain. They hear thunder and their hearts pound with hope for relief from the Southwest monsoons. Instead, the storms bring cloud-to-ground lightning but little moisture, increasing the possibility of even more wildfires.

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THE SOUTHWEST MONSOONS

The Southwest monsoons start in northern Mexico, which receives moisture from two sides: California and the Gulf of Mexico. When the land reaches its peak of heat late in the summer months, often with triple-digit temperatures, the winds change direction and the monsoons begin.

But Dr. DuBois, the state's climatologist, has few encouraging words for those waiting for the Southwest monsoons.

"There is a chance of some improvement in the situation in the southwest portion of the state, a glimmer of hope, but not for the central and eastern portions of New Mexico," DuBois said in a recent interview. "Some areas have already received good precipitation, but it may take more than a year of rains to bring the forage back that is necessary for livestock and wildlife."

DuBois is working closely with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center in an effort to advise ranchers, city managers, wildlife groups, and wildlife refuge managers on the possibility of rain. He meets quarterly with the governor's Drought Task Force and offers a monthly webinar for residents that explains water levels and flows, and any departures from the seasonal forecast.

COMPETING INTERESTS

The drought, extreme heat, wildfires, and destruction are all part of the circle of life in the Southwest, says Charna Lefton, spokeswoman for the state Fish and Wildlife Department.

"In the Old West people had a popular saying about water," Ms. Lefton says. "They said whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting. That's the way it's been for many years in the American West. Everyone wants to make sure their personal interests are met."

A look at the numbers goes a long way toward explaining the concern. According to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), in 2012 there were 11 weather and climate disasters that caused damage exceeding $1 billion each in the US, including the ongoing drought in the Southwest.

In addition to cities, those competing for the dwindling water supply include ranchers, who are often forced to sell their herds early to avoid the loss from the drought; farmers, who are dependent on water for their crops; animal activists fighting to protect endangered species struggling to survive as lakes go dry; and managers of the state's nine wildlife refuges.

WILDLIFE REFUGES

According to Rob Larrañaga, a wildlife refuge manager for the Northern New Mexico Wildlife Refuge Complex, numerous lakes and wells are drying up on the wildlife refuges in New Mexico, and if the drought continues the consequences could change migration patterns for the many species of migrating birds that use New Mexico as a resting stop before moving on to Mexico.

"One lake at the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge, Maxwell 13, went dry in May, and this lake hasn't been dry since 1978," Mr. Larrañaga explains. The lake received rain a week later. However, Crane Lake, a popular tourist spot at the Las Vegas Wildlife Refuge, went dry on March 15 and remains dry.

The Las Vegas Wildlife Refuge has solar-powered wells for the elk population, and the bald eagles remained for the summer, but the geese and ducks that use the refuge on their annual migration continued on their flight seeking water.

"We do not have the grains or water required for their habitat," Larrañaga explains. This is the second year that the Las Vegas Wildlife Refuge was unable to plant crops and the third year for the Maxwell Wildlife Refuge.

The Las Vegas Wildlife Refuge is part of the Storey Lake Water Users Association, and the refuge is at the bottom of the list for use of water, according to Tom Harvey, wildlife refuge superviser for Arizona and New Mexico. The lake is low, and the refuge hasn't received water allocations for two years.

"When discussing the fact that the lakes are dry, it's important to remember the many fish these lakes support, as well, and some fish are endangered species," Mr. Harvey says. "The Greater Sandhill Crane, which uses the wetlands as a breeding ground, has decreased in numbers by 10 percent." Harvey stressed that they have not seen any animals dying from starvation or dehydration.

Disagreements over water are as common as resources are limited in states with a desert climate. "Sometimes states will disagree with each other about the amount of water they should receive from a river, and sometimes environmental organizations decide to challenge decisions regarding water issues," Harvey explains. Some of these disagreements will be played out in court as resources become scarce, he says.

"In recent times we've had a greater need for water, particularly with growing urban areas," Harvey says. "It's always a balancing act when discussing the limited amounts of water in the West."

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The Muslim Brotherhood’s Outrage: Protests and Gunfire Follow Morsi’s Ousting

Karl Vick / Cairo 15 hours agoPoliticsEgyptMuslim Brotherhood

To bar entrance to the stretch of Nasr Road where several thousand diehard Muslim Brothers have established a makeshift protest camp, the Egyptian army parked a line of armored vehicles, evenly spaced and impossible to miss — standing as they are between the grave of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the reviewing stand where the Egyptian president was assassinated by Islamist extremists.

A couple of long blocks further on, bearded men stand behind homemade shields at a checkpoint of their own. The street beyond is crowded with a fraction of the millions who lifted the Brotherhood to power in every election since the 2011 overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. Some sit dejected on curbs. A few arrange piles of broken concrete – first gathered as weapons – into swooping Arabic letters that might be read from the air: “Legitimacy is the source,” reads one. Most, however, stand quietly in small groups, keen to articulate both their acute sense of betrayal and a determination that has been a hallmark of the Brotherhood since it was founded 80 years ago, though now expressed in more apocalyptic terms.

(MORE: Adli Mansour: Who is Egypt’s New Interim Leader?)

“The veil of democracy has been removed,” says Ali Holayel, 37, of Suez City. “We adopted peacefulness. We adopted democracy. They have used democracy against us.

“The end of it,” he says, “will be our souls, our deaths. The whole Islamic movement will join.”

The Brothers are scrambling for footing in a world suddenly turned upside down. Until Wednesday afternoon, they held the presidency, the cabinet, the upper house of parliament, and the prospect of months before being called to account by voters in the next election. Then President Mohamed Morsi was taken into custody by the army, arrest warrants were issued for 300 others and the armored personnel carriers moved into place.

“How is the democracy game played?” asks Sayeed Mohammad, a towel around his neck to cut the heat from Thursday’s afternoon sun. “Majority and minority, right? Fifty-percent plus one, majority rules. We’re not cutting anyone out of the process. We’re just asking people to respect the rules of the game.”

(PHOTOS: Egyptians Protest the Rule of Morsi, Celebrate Ouster)

In the Egypt beyond the armored cordon, the forces behind the coup were hard at work marketing the new regime. It was not a soft sell. Twice on Thursday, and again on Friday morning, fighter jets put on an air show over downtown Cairo, trailing decorative smoke in the colors of the national flag, then arcing across the pale blue sky to form a massive valentine.

On television, the government run Nile News channel aired patriotic songs over a montage that featured an aerial image of a massive gathering of people – presumably taken on June 30, when millions of Egyptians turned out to protest Morsi’s rule – followed by an aerial image of a massive gathering of tanks. All stations sympathetic to the Brotherhood were taken off the air.

“The thing that upsets me right now is they’re making us feel like we don’t really belong to the country,” says Hassan Ahmed, 47, and leaning on a car listening to speakers outside the Rabaa al-Adawia mosque, ground zero for the encampment. “I don’t really care about political Islam. I’m not here about political Islam. I’m here as a regular person who voted. If it was [Mohammad] El-Baradei who was president and he was removed by force, I would be here all the same,” Ahmed says, naming the liberal Nobel Laureate who heads a secular liberal party.

(MORE: Schadenfreude in the Arab World: Middle East Reacts to Morsi’s Ouster)

Ahmed, an engineer, said he voted for Morsi but is not himself a member of the Brotherhood. “I elected Morsi because he had an institution that would work with him, spread out all over Egypt and they knew the problems of the population.” He said he found himself weeping after the coup, and made his way to the encampment, one of two in Cairo. “I came here only a few hours ago, but I came here to die,” he says, and chuckles.

No confrontation appeared imminent at the time, but on Friday afternoon Brotherhood supporters marched from a mass rally at the Nasr Road encampment to the army installation where Morsi is thought to be held. Gunshots were heard, and journalists saw at least one body. Reuters reported three killed. A military spokesman insisted soldiers fired only blanks. Before the march, Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said in a Tweet that the struggle against the coup would take place only through “peaceful means,” through a National Coalition. “Any violence is rejected.”

It seems too early to tell which way things would go. In Egypt’s largely lawless Sinai peninsula, where groups affiliated with al Qaeda have taken root, attacks on the military put the region under an official state of emergency. But there were also signs that other Islamist groups were continuing to invest in politics, evidently happy to capitalize on the Brotherhood’s woes: The Salafist Nour party was represented on the podium Wednesday where Gen. Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi announced Morsi’s removal. And the Islamic Group, which throughout the 1990s carried out terror attacks aimed at bringing down the Egyptian state, called for “a comprehensive reconciliation.” Why? “To open a bright future for our dear Egypt.”

(MORE: An Elected President Has Been Deposed: Egypt’s Party Looks Premature)

The little-known jurist who was appointed interim president, Adli Mansour, professed that the Brotherhood would be welcome to participate in the elections he vowed were forthcoming. But it was unclear whether the Brotherhood could be lured back into the process. Their urban encampments amounted to an expression of the politics of protest that have held sway in Egypt – the one straddling Nasr Road in many ways a mini-Tahrir, with its makeshift tents and tea vendors and nonstop speeches.

At one point Thursday, there was even a phalanx of clerics from Al-Azhar University, their distinctive red and white hats bobbing in formation as they arrived from a side street, chanting “Illegitimate.” The University’s chief cleric supported the coup, but the school’s faculty includes a good number of Brotherhood supporters.

“The democratic system develops with time,” says Mohammed Ahmed Mahmoud, a pharmacist in the Giza section of Cairo, moving out from under the shade of a tarpaulin to chat. His words were directed at the injustice of a coup that, on Friday, prompted the African Union to bar Egypt from membership. But the observations might, in one possible future, also prove useful in a remedial course for the Brotherhood, should such a course be undertaken.

“There could be mistakes at the beginning,” he says. “You have to stay with it. It didn’t appear in Europe overnight. It took a long time. I consider the Muslim Brotherhood to present the moderate way.”

America's Most Feces-Polluted Beaches, Mapped

Philip Bump 11 hours agoNatureEnvironment

America's Most Feces-Polluted Beaches, Mapped

There is nothing more refreshing on a hot, Fourth of July weekend than a nice dip in the ocean. Everyone loves a nice swim, after all, though that enthusiasm may be tempered by the fact that the EPA says a beach is safe for swimming if only one out of every 28 beachgoers gets sick. Here, as a public service, are the beaches that in 2012 upped those odds significantly.

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Every year, the Natural Resources Defense Council compiles its "Testing the Waters" guide to the cleanliness of beaches on the coasts and the Great Lakes. And every year, the results vary: Some of our beaches are consistently pristine; others, very much not. We took the data from this year's survey (documenting 2012 testing) and made three maps of the most popular beaches. The first shows the NRDC's star ranking, which includes both test results and the notifications posted when a beach tests poorly. The second shows how often tests exceeded the national standard for allowable pollutants (which we'll describe more below). The third shows the change in that figure between 2011 and 2012. And the fourth shows how often those beaches are tested for contamination.

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View: NRDC rating | How often the beach exceeded standards | Change since 2011 | Monthly quality tests

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View Map

The numbers and pins and data give you some information, but still don't convey the whole picture. For that, we turn to the NRDC's description of what it means when a beach exceeds national beachwater quality standards.

More than 80 percent of closings and advisories were issued because bacteria levels in beachwater exceeded public health standards, indicating the potential presence of human or animal waste in the water.

If a beach exceeded the national standard five percent of the time, that means that one out of every twenty samples had unhealthy levels of pollutants. Mostly fecal pollutants, that is.

RELATED: Chart: The Precipitous Decline of Gulf Fishing

And then we come back to that sickeningly low "one in 28" standard. We mean that literally. That standard is set at a level that allows 36 gastrointestinal illnesses for every 1,000 swimmers. So there's just enough pollution allowed to ensure that only 35 people out of every 1,000 get upset stomachs from ingesting human or animal waste. (NRDC: "Just imagine a restaurant where 1 in 28 people were allowed to get sick—these are simply unacceptable standards.") So one out of every 27 people can get sick without the beach being closed. If you and 26 of your friends go to the beach, and none of them gets sick — you're lucky number 27.

RELATED: The Hamptons Is Ruining Lives Earlier Than Usual This Year

Remember, these data are from testing conducted in 2012. That's where the percent change map might be helpful. If you see a beach that got worse between 2011 and 2012, the change from 2012 and 2013 could be even worse still.

There's only one way to know how clean the water is: testing. That why we've included a map that shows the number of tests conducted per month. If a beach is tested daily, it's a decent bet that the water is safer to swim in; after all, dangerous levels of pollution (from, say, sewer run-off) would be detected sooner.

One final note. If you don't live near the coast, and perhaps think that the chlorinated water of a swimming pool is a better bet: think again. Nothing wrong with taking a cold shower and sitting in front of an air conditioner until autumn rolls around.

Photos: Competitors in the intentionally dirty New York Merrell Down & Dirty National Mud and Obstacle Series. (AP)

The case against Zimmerman: Far from clear, undercut by blunder

Daniel Trotta 12 hours ago

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George Zimmerman chats with his defense attorney Mark O'Mara during an early morning recess in his secondnd-degree murder trial in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in Seminole circuit court in Sanford. REUTERS/Jacob Langston/Pool

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) - As the prosecution concluded its case against George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin, the accused murderer emerged having been called a truth-teller by the chief detective on the case and allowed to present his story without cross-examination.

While some experts have credited prosecutors with building the best case possible out of sometimes murky evidence, they generally see the case as falling short of proving second-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt during nine days of testimony.

One blunder supports that view: prosecutors failed to stop police investigator Chris Serino from expressing his opinion that Zimmerman was telling the truth in his account of killing Martin in self-defense.

Some lawyers see an acquittal, a deadlocked jury, or a conviction on a lesser charge such as manslaughter as more likely, while cautioning they could not conclude how the six-member, all-female jury might see the evidence.

The prosecution began by quoting Zimmerman's expletive-laden call about Martin to a dispatcher, and the jury could still see Zimmerman as the state has portrayed him: a would-be cop who profiled a young black man as a criminal and then pursued him, vigilante-style.

The prosecution rested its case on Friday, when the defense started calling its own witnesses. The defense case was due to continue on Monday.

"Those of us who watch trials look for the big flashy knockout punch that resolves the case one way or another," said Richard Gabriel, president of the litigation and trial consulting firm Decision Analysis. "I'm not sure the prosecutors have done that."

The case was ambiguous from the start. Police in the town of Sanford, Florida, originally concluded there was no crime on February 26, 2012, when Zimmerman, now 29, killed Martin, 17, with a single shot in the heart.

Zimmerman told police Martin looked suspicious and admitted at one point to following him, but Sanford police investigators believed Zimmerman's story of acting in self-defense after getting pummeled in a fight.

That decision, followed by protests calling it a racial injustice, turned the homicide into a case of national interest. Zimmerman, who is white and Hispanic, was not arrested until 45 days after the shooting, when a special prosecutor accused him of second-degree murder.

The jury must decide whether to believe Zimmerman, and because prosecutors failed to object to one question on cross-examination, the jury learned that the lead police detective found Zimmerman's story credible.

Sanford Police Investigator Chris Serino, who interrogated Zimmerman, told the jury he concluded the defendant was either telling the truth or was a pathological liar. At that point lead defense attorney Mark O'Mara asked, "Do you think he was telling the truth?"

Prosecutors should have objected to the question, analysts said, but they remained silent.

"Yes," Serino replied.

They objected the next day, when Judge Debra Nelson ruled witnesses were not supposed to comment on the credibility of other witnesses because it was the jury's job to decide who to believe. She ordered the jury to ignore that exchange, which means it cannot be mentioned in closing arguments and they should not consider it during deliberations, but her ruling also called further attention to what Serino said.

"They (prosecutors) clearly missed the objection, and it was very generous of the judge to allow it to be stricken," said Mark NeJame, a Florida defense lawyer who turned down an offer to represent Zimmerman and recommended the defendant hire O'Mara.

"All sides make errors in a case. You're never going to have a perfectly tried case," NeJame said.

For example, defense attorney Don West began opening arguments with a joke that fell flat. "Knock knock. Who's there? George Zimmerman. George Zimmerman who? Good, you're on the jury," he said. He later apologized.

NINE DAYS

The nine-day prosecution case at times resembled one in favor of the defendant. Zimmerman was allowed to present his version of events repeatedly and largely uncontested in audio and video statements he gave to police, plus in a television interview given to Sean Hannity of Fox News.

The jury saw multiple photos of his bloody and swollen nose, and cuts to the back of his head, showing that Martin clearly got the best of their fight before Zimmerman fired the shot.

Prosecutors had to present some of that evidence to establish the basic facts that a homicide was committed, and some of their witnesses were pliable under cross-examination, lawyers said. They were wise to put on some of the evidence helpful to Zimmerman in their own case rather than leave it to the defense case, when it could be seen in an even more favorable light.

Nonetheless, there were risks, such as when prosecutors called Zimmerman's former college instructor for a class on criminal litigation, U.S. Army Captain Alexis Carter, who was friendly toward Zimmerman in the jury's presence and called him an "A" student.

"That's a significant courtroom drama moment that humanizes the defendant. It's not that he's been humanized by a gang member. He's been humanized by an officer of the U.S. military," said William Shepherd, a Florida-based defense lawyer and partner with the firm Holland & Knight.

While Zimmerman was able to speak to the jury without cross-examination through his recorded statements, the jury also saw in the Fox interview Zimmerman saying he regretted nothing about that night, which he attributed to "God's plan."

Prosecutors also may have scored when its hand-picked medical examiner said Zimmerman's injuries were consistent with one punch that could have decked Zimmerman, contradicting his contention Martin repeatedly slammed his head into the concrete.

"I think they presented the strongest evidence available. I think the evidence is strong enough to convict George Zimmerman," said Daryl Parks, a lawyer helping represent the Martin family.

"They've done better than I expected them to do," NeJame said. "They've been tenacious."

(Additional reporting by Barbara Liston; Editing by Paul Thomasch, Peter Henderson and Bernard Orr)

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