If you own a home, you know that there is always something that needs fixing, installation, or general repair. Whether it's a faucet that's leaking, a new bed that needs to be assembled, or a Nest thermostat that needs to be installed, there's always something.

A startup wants to make this particular part of homeownership less painful by offering a dedicated handyman to take care of all the random tasks on your to-do list. It's an interesting model. Honey houses employs the tradesman as part of its staff as an employee to ensure that the work in your home is consistent. Homeowners pay Honey Homes a flat fee ($200 per month or $2,000 per year) for the convenience of an “end-to-end” membership-based service through the app.

The way it works is that members are assigned a dedicated handyman who comes by at least once a month to take care of home improvements and preventive maintenance. Because employees are employed, they also receive benefits, including parental leave and paid time off, a rarity in an industry that has historically relied on contractors.

Honey Homes launched with its first 10 beta customers in August 2021 and is currently available to single-family homeowners in all suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area, but not in San Francisco itself. It recently began operations in Dallas.

Man-woman team Vishwas Prabhakara (Yelp's first general manager) and Avantika Prabhakara (former marketing director at Opendoor, Trulia and Zillow) joined forces with Katie Pham and Rory O'Connell in 2021 to create Honey Homes.

Over the past two years, Honey Homes has grown to over 500 members and says it has completed over 20,000 tasks for homeowners Vishwas. The company increased membership — and therefore revenue — eightfold in 2022, he added, and has already nearly doubled this year.

Since its inception, the company has raised a total of $12.1 million in funding, including most recently $9 million in a Series A led by Khosla Ventures. Khosla and Pear VC co-led Honey Homes' seed round in 2021. Other supporters are: Teambuilder Ventures and Moving Capital, as well as angel investors including DoorDash co-founders Tony Xu and Stanley Tang, Lyft co-founder Logan Green, Opendoor co-founder Eric Wu and Mercury co-founder Immad Akhund, among others.

Vishwas told TechCrunch that he has started working on the company in earnest after speaking to a number of homeowners and Conclusion: There would be enough people who would be interested in paying a generalist to come to their home once or twice a month to carry out ongoing maintenance or improvements.

“I asked her, 'Would this be interesting to you?' Would you pay for it?' And surprisingly for me the answer was a resounding yes,” he said. “We seemed to have struck a chord with homeowners.”

The Honey Homes app allows a homeowner to create a to-do list and schedule appointments. It also helps homeowners work with specialists when necessary.

But what if I were curious and crossed all the tasks off your to-do list? What then?

“The one thing that really opened my eyes is that when you offer this as a member service, you suddenly realize you want more,” Vishwas said. “And there are some people who just like the peace of mind.”

Honey Homes employs 45 people, including 25 craftsmen. Vishwas said the consistency of employees has helped strengthen the company's credibility.

“Of a From a homeowner’s perspective, you want someone you can build a relationship with and trust,” he told TechCrunch. “So it is extremely valuable for a homeowner to see the same person over and over again.”

The startup has also launched Honey Homes University, a training facility for people working in the field to develop their skills. Looking ahead, Honey Homes eventually plans to expand into urban centers, but for now is focused on serving suburban single-family homeowners, who tend to have greater maintenance and upkeep needs, according to Vishwas.

Khosla partner Evan Moore, who joined Honey Homes' board as part of its Series A funding round and is also a co-founder of DoorDash, said that as vice president of product at Opendoor, he saw that the company “could receive significantly better service, quality and prices from home service providers.”

But as an individual homeowner, “it is difficult to reliably get good work done at a reasonable cost.”

Moore wrote via email: “Many startups have tried to improve this customer experience and failed, but Honey Homes seems to have gotten it right.” Rarely does an idea work so well so quickly. I have been here since day one and have been fortunate to see the incredible response from customers.”

He believes Honey Homes is different from many other consumer home services startups that simply connect homeowners with potential providers or “act as a concierge.”

Moore added: “Honey Homes solves the entire problem of home improvement and maintenance, from idea to completion. By repeatedly delivering quality work, we build trust with our customers. They then reward us with more work over time.”

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The Historic U.S. Coast Guard Chimney Rock Boathouse.

Chimney Rock is located at the eastern spur of the Point Reyes Headlands. The Chimney Rock area is a popular destination for visitors wishing to view elephant seals, birds, and wildflowers. The 1.75-mile (2.8-km) round-trip Chimney Rock Trail leads along the ridge crest of a narrow peninsula, offering spectacular views of Drakes Bay and the coastline stretching to the southeast. The historic Chimney Rock Lifeboat Station offers a glimpse into the harrowing jobs of rescuing crew and passengers from ships that ran aground along this rugged coastline.

Come Prepared

• Print out the Chimney Rock Area map. (125 KB PDF)
• Fuel: The closest gas station is 20 miles (32 km) away in Point Reyes Station. Be sure you have sufficient fuel in your vehicle for a minimum 40-mile (64 km) round-trip drive, not including side trips to other points of interest within the National Seashore.
• Weather: Visitors may experience stiff winds, cool temperatures, fog, and/or rain at Chimney Rock; so dress appropriately. Wear layered clothing.
  National Weather Service Forecast for the Chimney Rock area
• Water: Bring a water bottle. There are no potable sources of water at Chimney Rock. The nearest potable source of water is a water bottle filling station/water fountain located near the east end of the green garages that are located approximately 100 yards (100 meters) before one arrives at the Lighthouse Visitor Center or a water fountain located in the courtyard of the Kenneth C. Patrick Visitor Center at Drakes Beach. Bottled water is not sold at Point Reyes National Seashore’s visitor centers or bookstores.
• Food: There are no food services west of Inverness, which is a thirty-five-minute drive from the Chimney Rock parking lot. Bring food from home or purchase food at one of the stores or restaurants in West Marin before heading out to Chimney Rock if it is close to mealtime.
• Restrooms: Restrooms are available at the Chimney Rock parking lot from 6 am to midnight. Be sure to use the restrooms before heading out on area trails.
• Phones: Cell phone reception is very minimal to nonexistent in the Chimney Rock area.

• Drones: Launching, landing, or operating a remotely operated aircraft (aka “remotely piloted aircraft,” “unmanned aircraft,” or “drone”) from or on lands and waters administered by the National Park Service within the boundaries of Point Reyes National Seashore is prohibited.

  If you observe drone use in Point Reyes National Seashore, please call park dispatch at 415-464-5170 or contact staff at the nearest Visitor Center as soon as possible. If you observe drone use in other National Park Service areas or if you find photographs or videos online or elsewhere that were illegally taken within National Park Service areas from drones, you can report the violation to the National Park Service tip line at 888-653-0009 or by email.

• Pets: Dogs may be walked in the parking lot and along Chimney Rock Road west of the parking lot (i.e., back toward Sir Francis Drake Boulevard); otherwise, dogs are prohibited. Please be aware that most visitors to Chimney Rock are away from their vehicle for an hour or longer. Please do not leave your dog unattended in your vehicle; leave your dog at home instead. This prohibition does not apply to working service dogs, which are allowed on trails and in public buildings. If you have a service dog, please inquire at a park visitor center for information before heading out to the Chimney Rock area. Visit our Pets page for more information about visiting Point Reyes National Seashore with your dog.

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Sir Francis Drake Boulevard passes through a number of ranches on its way to Chimney Rock and the Point Reyes Headlands.

The Drive

Chimney Rock is located at the eastern-most end of the Point Reyes Headlands. Drive west ~19 miles (~30 km) on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. After passing through the “A” Ranch, turn left at the Y signed for Chimney Rock and follow Chimney Rock Road ~0.9 miles (~1.5 km) to the Chimney Rock parking lot. Chimney Rock Road is only about ten feet (3 meters) wide, but serves as a two-way road. Please observe the speed limit and look ahead to keep watch for oncoming traffic. If you do notice a vehicle heading your way, pull into the next turnout until the other vehicle has had a chance to pass.

Sir Francis Drake Boulevard is windy and slow-going, so allow forty-five minutes to drive the ~20 miles (~32 km) from the Bear Valley/Olema/Point Reyes Station area to the Chimney Rock parking lot (one hour and thirty minutes round-trip), not including any time you will spend in the area. Allow one hour and forty-five minutes for the drive (three hours and thirty minutes round-trip) from the Santa Rosa area, northwest San Francisco, or the northern East Bay. Many visitors spend at least an hour or two in the Chimney Rock area.
Directions to Chimney Rock from the Bear Valley Visitor Center.

RVs and Trailers

Recreational vehicles (RVs) and vehicles pulling trailers with a combined length in excess of 24 feet (7.3 meters) are prohibited on Chimney Rock Road. If you are traveling with a trailer or are driving an RV towing a passenger vehicle, consider unhitching at the bus/RV/trailer-only parking lot at Bear Valley and taking only the passenger vehicle for the drive out to the Chimney Rock area. Overnight parking/camping in RVs and trailers is prohibited throughout Point Reyes National Seashore.

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Parking

The parking lot at the Chimney Rock Trailhead can only accommodate twenty vehicles. As a result, parking space availability is very limited, particularly in the afternoon. Please observe all “No Parking” signs. Please refrain from parking along the shoulder of the road or off of the pavement. Doing so kills vegetation and increases erosion.

Parking Lot

Chimney Rock Parking Lot

• 
  
  20 total spaces
  

• 
  0 oversized spaces
  

• 
  37.995124821, -122.979734524
  

A small paved parking lot with space for 20 vehicles. Park here to hike the Chimney Rock Trail, walk to the Elephant Seal Overlook, or visit the Historic Point Reyes Lifeboat Station. A vault toilet is located at the southeast corner of the parking lot. The Chimney Rock Parking Lot is approximately 45 minutes by car from the Bear Valley Visitor Center via Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

Parking Fee

No parking or entrance fees are charged at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Cost: $0.00

Closures & Seasonal Exceptions

Amenities

Accessible Lot
Yes
Number of ADA-designated spaces
1
Number of ADA van-accessible spaces
1
Number of ADA step-free spaces
0
Total number of spaces
20
Number of oversize vehicle spaces
0

Accessibility

The parking lot at Chimney Rock has one van accessible parking spot and is composed of asphalt. The path to the Elephant Seal Overlook involves a rather short but moderately steep descent along an asphalt driveway (which is degraded in places), and then a flat traverse along a rammed-earth 0.2 mile-long (0.3 kilometer) trail. Individuals in wheelchairs may need assistance with the descent and accent of the driveway.

Individuals with a Disabled Person parking placard or plate may drive their personal vehicle to the Lifeboat Station’s Boathouse parking area. Please drive slowly and carefully since this section of the one-lane access road doubles as the pedestrian path from the main Chimney Rock parking lot to the Boathouse. Volunteers sometimes staff the Boathouse on weekends and holidays from January through March. The Boathouse’s first floor and boat bay are wheelchair accessible. There is also an accessible restroom within the Boathouse. At other times, visitors may explore the Lifeboat Station grounds, where wayside exhibits provide information about the U.S. Lifesaving Service and U.S. Coast Guard history at Point Reyes.

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Stay on designated trails

The only official trails in the Chimney Rock area are shown in the map to the right.

Hiking along the bluff tops can be unsafe and is not recommended. Stay away from cliff edges. Loose soil and/or rock can give way suddenly and you may fall. Do not climb cliffs.

Visitors walking off of official trails and paths trample vegetation, which may lead to the death of the trampled plants. Over time, as more and more visitors use a route, it starts to look more and more like an official trail, and more and more visitors use it, resulting in a feedback loop that makes the “trail” look “official.” However, these “social paths” tend to exacerbate erosion and harm threatened and endangered species. These paths also can lead to locations where visitors may be more at risk to injury, endangering themselves and any potential rescuers.

Do not “hop” the fences to get a “better” photo or for any other reason. Fences and other barriers are there for your safety. The bluffs and cliffs in the Chimney Rock are prone to collapse with little warning. Stay well away from the bluff tops. Individuals who are found on the wrong side of fences will be cited for entering a closed area.

During the winter, hundreds of northern elephants seals can be seen from the Elephant Seal Overlook.

Elephant Seal Overlook

From the Chimney Rock parking lot, walk down the driveway 150 feet (~50 meters), bear left at the Y, and continue along the Fish Docks access road another 260 feet (~80 meters) to the trailhead for the Elephant Seal Overlook Trail. The relatively flat dirt trail leads 850 feet (~260 meters) northwest to the Elephant Seal Overlook. While it may be possible to view northern elephant seals from here on any given day of the year, December through March is the period during which visitors may view several hundred elephant seals hauled out at the southwest end of Drakes Beach as the seals return to give birth and to mate.

Please visit our Viewing Elephant Seals page for more information.

Chimney Rock Trail

This spectacular 1.75-mile (2.8 km) hike offers views of Drakes Bay and the Pacific Ocean and is renowned for great spring wildflowers. Rocky cliffs drop off steeply to the water, so there is no beach access. While it is possible to see a few whales any given day of the year, from March through May, dozens to hundreds of gray whales migrate north past Chimney Rock every day. Fog and wind can make this hike challenging. Start this hike from the southeast corner of the Chimney Rock parking lot.

Photo of a park employee standing over and pointing at a newly developed fissure along the Chimney Rock Trail on December 21, 2015.

Fissures Near the Chimney Rock Trail

Cracks were reported on a portion of the bluff near the Chimney Rock Trail on December 21, 2015. These fissures could indicate the possibility of a weakening cliff face in the area. The land may be unstable and a collapse or erosion could occur. Visitors are reminded to stay on designated trails.

Bluffs along the California coast are inherently unstable. They are prone to crumbling and sliding, especially in wet weather. It is very dangerous to climb or walk along the edge of cliffs. Be aware of falling rocks if walking near the base of a rock face.

View:
Close-up photograph of the fissure. (172 KB jpg)
Photograph of the area with the fissure from the southeast. (117 KB jpg)
Aerial photograph of the location of the fissure marked in yellow. (216 KB jpg)

The Historic U.S. Coast Guard Chimney Rock Boathouse.

Historic Lifeboat Station

Despite the efforts of the men and women who worked at the Point Reyes Lighthouse, which was constructed in 1870, ships continued to wreck on the rocks and beaches along the dangerous Point Reyes peninsula. In 1889, the U.S. Life-Saving Service opened a Life Saving Station on the Point Reyes Beach, the first of two built at Point Reyes. The U.S. Lifesaving Service was combined with the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service to form the U.S. Coast Guard in 1915. In 1927, the Coast Guard moved their operations moved from Point Reyes Beach to the protected waters at the southwest end of Drakes Beach near Chimney Rock. Eventually modern technologies eclipsed the need for the Lifeboat Station at Point Reyes. In 1969,the Point Reyes Lifeboat Station was closed and, shortly thereafter, was transferred to the National Park Service for preservation.
Visit our Lifeboat Station History at Point Reyes page for more information.

The Lifeboat Station buildings are visible from the Chimney Rock Trail and the station’s access road (which is open only to NPS and other authorized vehicles). Visitors may explore the Lifeboat Station grounds, where wayside exhibits provide information about the U.S. Lifesaving Service and U.S. Coast Guard history at Point Reyes.

Today, the Historic Lifeboat Station at Point Reyes National Seashore is primarily used as an educational facility for non-profit groups learning about the resources of the natural and cultural resources of Point Reyes. The Boathouse is sometimes open to the public from 11 am to 4 pm on weekends and federal holidays from January through March, if volunteer staff is available. The Boathouse contains the historic Coast Guard Motorized Lifeboat CG-36542 and has the last intact marine railway on the West Coast. Kids activities, a 10-minute video on elephant seals, and complimentary hot beverages (cocoa, tea, coffee) are available when the Boathouse is open, along with hands-on interactive activities allowing both children and adults to learn about seal and whale adaptations.

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Pleasanton, Calif., June 30, 2016 (Newswire.com) –
​Service Champions Heating & Air Conditioning, a provider of residential heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and home comfort services, has been named to Bay Area News Group's 2016 Top Workplaces list. This is the first time a residential HVAC contractor has received this prestigious list, which is based solely on an annual survey of employees of Bay Area companies.

The list of top workplaces is determined by the results of an employee feedback survey conducted by Workplace dynamics, LLC, a research firm specializing in improving corporate health and the workplace. The survey measures multiple aspects of workplace culture, including alignment, execution and connection. Companies must meet strict workplace health standards to be selected as a Top Workplace.
The full list of 2016 Top Workplaces was announced and published on Sunday, June 26 on-line at http://www.topworkplaces.com/frontend.php/regional-list/list/Bay area.

“I am extremely proud that Service Champions has been recognized as a Top Workplace and is particularly honored for being the first residential HVAC company ever to be named to this prestigious list,” said Kevin Comerford, CEO and founder of Service Champions. “Our goal has always been to inspire by building a highly successful, high-performance team and business while providing our team members with numerous opportunities for advancement.”

Kevin Comerford, CEO and Founder of Service Champions

Service Champions has been recognized regularly over the past 13 years. The company has been recognized as a Diamond Certified® company for the 13th consecutive year, meeting ongoing research and evaluation requirements to qualify for the prestigious service award. Additionally, Service Champions proudly boasts an “A+” rating with the Better Business Bureau, a 5-star rating on Yelp.com, and an “A” rating on home improvement and review website Angie's List.

Hiring service technicians and business people

Service Champions is recruiting service technicians and business professionals for positions throughout the East
Bay, South Bay and Sacramento areas. Learn more about full-time positions at www.servicechampions.com/careers. “As a values-driven organization, we focus on the personal growth of our team members and how this directly impacts the entire company,” says Dan MichieVice President for People.

To inquire about career opportunities with Service Champions, contact Dan Michie at dmicchie@servicechampions.net or (925) 271-0977.

About Service Champions Heating & Air Conditioning
Founded by Kevin Comerford In 2003, Service Champions began providing heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and home comfort services to customers in the East Bay and South Bay areas.

Driven by his dream to create a company that not only provides an excellent customer experience, but also
serve and support the local community, ComerfordA Pleasanton native, developed a corporate culture
This reflects his passion for helping others by providing opportunities for success to his more than 185 team members.

Around Workplace dynamicsLLC headquartered in ExtonPA, Workplace dynamics specializes in employee surveys and workplace improvements. This year alone, more than two million employees in over 6,000 organizations will take part in the Top Workplaces Campaign – a program that it runs in collaboration with more than 40 renowned media partners across the United States. Workplace Dynamics also offers consulting services to improve employee engagement and organizational health. Workplace dynamics is a founding member of B Corporation, a coalition of organizations leading a global movement to redefine business success by offering a positive vision for doing business better.

Source: Service Champions Heating and Air Conditioning

The post Service Champions Heating & Air Conditioning Named a San Francisco Bay Space 2016 “Prime Office” appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

A San Francisco woman has spent more than a quarter century helping older adults and people with disabilities stay safely in their homes.

Daisy McArthur lives a life of service because she loves people.

“I say, 'Whatever you do, be patient, be kind and listen to them,'” she said.

At age 76, McArthur has worked for the city's Department of Home Support Services for more than 25 years. It helps low-income seniors and people with disabilities so they can stay in their own homes instead of moving into a facility.

She also serves as secretary to the board of directors. Her service is rooted in her Southern upbringing. As a child, she accompanied her mother and her neighbors during emergencies.

“We watched them take care of the elderly. People who got sick or were bitten by snakes broke a leg or an arm,” she described.

McArthur helps her clients with daily tasks such as bathing, dressing, cooking and laundry. She cared for a client for more than 30 years until he recently passed away at the age of 101. Before that, she looked after his 102-year-old mother.

The job isn't easy and can be lonely, but McArthur knows she's making a difference.

“I want to treat myself the way I would treat you, and that is kindness. The golden rule,” McArthur said.

Executive Director Eileen Norman says McArthur is the perfect role model, mentor and trainer for 22,000 home support service providers in San Francisco.

“Ms. Daisy is warm, loving, sensitive and matter-of-fact,” Norman said. “Above all, Ms. Daisy fights for what she believes in.”

When a fire destroyed her Bush Street apartment building 25 years ago, she fought for emergency relief and housing for three dozen other homeless tenants, earning her the nickname “Mayor of Bush Street.”

At the start of the COVID pandemic, McArthur and one of her clients became advocates for vaccinating older adults when many were skeptical of the vaccine.

She also organized memorial services and funerals for several homeless people she met.

Ultimately, McArthur just wants to help people succeed.

“I hope they remember the kindness, the goodness and the work I did,” she said. “There’s an old song: ‘May the work I do speak for me.”

This week's Bay Area Jefferson Award goes to Daisy McArthur for going above and beyond in providing home care and training.

More from CBS News

Sharon Chin

Sharon Chin is a general assignment reporter who also profiles Jefferson Award winners for KPIX 5 Eyewitness News. Since joining KPIX 5 in 1997, Chin has covered everything from fires to features, from politics to perspectives, but she is especially proud of bringing viewers the stories of Jefferson Award winners. She feels inspired when she tells the stories of our community's heroes.

The post “Ms. Daisy” lives lifetime of service serving to San Francisco aged, disabled stay of their houses appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

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Photo credit: the Burtons/Getty Images

If you own a home, you know that there is always something that needs fixing, installation, or general repair. Whether it's a faucet that's leaking, a new bed that needs to be assembled, or a Nest thermostat that needs to be installed, there's always something.

A startup wants to make this particular part of homeownership less painful by offering a dedicated handyman to take care of all the random tasks on your to-do list. It's an interesting model. Honey houses employs the tradesman as part of its staff as an employee to ensure that the work in your home is consistent. Homeowners pay Honey Homes a flat fee ($200 per month or $2,000 per year) for the convenience of an “end-to-end” membership-based service through the app.

The way it works is that members are assigned a dedicated handyman who comes by at least once a month to take care of home improvements and preventive maintenance. Because employees are employed, they also receive benefits, including parental leave and paid time off, a rarity in an industry that has historically relied on contractors.

Honey Homes launched with its first 10 beta customers in August 2021 and is currently available to single-family homeowners in all suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area, but not in San Francisco itself. The company recently began operations in Dallas.

Man-woman team Vishwas Prabhakara (Yelp's first general manager) and Avantika Prabhakara (former marketing director at Opendoor, Trulia and Zillow) joined forces with Katie Pham and Rory O'Connell in 2021 to create Honey Homes.

Over the past two years, Honey Homes has grown to over 500 members and says it has completed over 20,000 tasks for homeowners Vishwas. The company grew membership — and therefore revenue — eightfold in 2022, he added, and has already nearly doubled this year.

Since its inception, the company has raised a total of $12.1 million in funding, including most recently $9 million in a Series A led by Khosla Ventures. Khosla and Pear VC co-led Honey Homes' seed round in 2021. Other supporters are: Teambuilder Ventures and Moving Capital, as well as angel investors such as DoorDash co-founders Tony Xu and Stanley Tang, Lyft co-founder Logan Green, Opendoor co-founder Eric Wu and Mercury co-founder Immad Akhund.

Vishwas told TechCrunch that he has started working on the company in earnest after speaking to a number of homeowners and Conclusion: There would be enough people who would be interested in paying a generalist to come to their home once or twice a month to carry out ongoing maintenance or improvements.

“I asked her, 'Would this be interesting to you?' Would you pay for it?' And surprisingly for me the answer was a resounding yes,” he said. “We seemed to have struck a chord with homeowners.”

The Honey Homes app allows a homeowner to create a to-do list and schedule appointments. It also helps homeowners work with specialists when necessary.

But what if I were curious and crossed all the tasks off your to-do list? What then?

“The one thing that really opened my eyes is that when you offer this as a member service, you suddenly realize you want more,” Vishwas said. “And there are some people who just like the peace of mind.”

Honey Homes employs 45 people, including 25 craftsmen. Vishwas said the consistency of employees has helped strengthen the company's credibility.

“Of a From a homeowner’s perspective, you want someone you can build a relationship with and trust,” he told TechCrunch. “So it is extremely valuable for a homeowner to see the same person over and over again.”

The startup has also launched Honey Homes University, a training facility for people working in the field to develop their skills. Looking ahead, Honey Homes eventually plans to expand into urban centers, but for now is focused on serving suburban single-family homeowners, who tend to have greater maintenance and upkeep needs, according to Vishwas.

Khosla partner Evan Moore, who joined Honey Homes' board as part of its Series A funding round and is also a co-founder of DoorDash, said that as vice president of product at Opendoor, he saw that the company “could receive significantly better service, quality and prices from home service providers.”

But as an individual homeowner, “it is difficult to reliably get good work done at a reasonable cost.”

Moore wrote via email: “Many startups have tried to improve this customer experience and failed, but Honey Homes seems to have gotten it right.” Rarely does an idea work so well so quickly. I have been there since day one and have been fortunate to see the incredible response from customers.”

He believes Honey Homes is different from many other consumer home services startups that simply connect homeowners with potential providers or “act as a concierge.”

Moore added: “Honey Homes solves the entire problem of home improvement and maintenance, from idea to completion. By repeatedly delivering quality work, we build trust with our customers. They then reward us with more work over time.”

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By J. Elliott Mendez

At 11:53 PM, Sunday, The National Weather Service issued a Coastal Flood Advisory warning the King Tides “will cause minor coastal flooding at low lying spots during high tide Monday night.”

In addition to flooding, “the lowest tides of the event will be observed in the early morning hours which may lead to trouble for mariners navigating shallow waterways,” said NWS.

While tidal levels will also rise along the Pacific coast, impacted areas will be more localized to San Francisco, North Bay Interior Valleys and the San Francisco Bay Shoreline.

“Tides have receded tonight allowing tonight’s advisory to expire,” said NWS. “But tides will increase again Monday night and successive nights this week.”

The advisory is to take effect at 8:00 PM Monday, and will last 4 hours, expiring at Midnight. However, NWS expects tidal readings to peak around Wednesday night.

Copyright © 2022 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

Copyright © 2022 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.

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LUBBOCK, Texas — The cold weather has arrived here on the South Plains, and one Lubbock company has already noticed an uptick in customers reaching out to say their heaters are out.

“Most people plan to get ready for summer because they don’t want to be hot, but they don’t seem to do nearly as much planning to get ready for winter,” said Jim Hamlin, comfort consultant at Bruce Thornton Air Conditioning. “So, when it hits, it’s a lot more devastating because you can freeze to death.”

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Hamlin said winter is the time when your furnace has to work hardest to heat your home, but many just aren’t taking good enough care of their equipment. He said the average life of a furnace is 12 years, but if it’s well-maintained, it’s not uncommon to see it running for up to 30 years.

Hamlin said the increase in demand for furnace repairs has been rather difficult due to the shortage of parts to fix those AC units.

“Rather than being able to do the repair that day, we’re having to find stuff from other towns, and have it shipped in and we’re getting people up and running,” Hamlin said. “I would say we’re having 99.9% success finding the part, but it may take a few days longer than it normally used to.”

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On top of that, Hamlin said the pandemic didn’t help things either.

“Because we went for a couple of years where people weren’t letting service techs in their house, I think there’s a bigger demand right now for service,” Hamlin said. “People feel a little bit better about having service techs come into their house to do things.”

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Hamlin recommends having a trusted company come out to do a ‘tune up’ before the temperatures drop even lower this winter.

“You’d be amazed at how many times we go out and people just don’t change their filter,” Hamlin said. “It’s cheap insurance. That filter is there to protect the equipment and keep the dust off the equipment so it will run better.”

Hamlin said dirt is the number one killer of HVAC systems, so keeping your furnace filter clean is of the utmost importance. He suggests replacing the filter monthly.

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“If the filter is not capturing the dirt and dust, it’s going through your system and blowing out into your home,” Hamlin said. “If it gets clogged up, it’s going to pull a certain amount of that dirt through your system and it’s going out into your home. You can’t totally cut down on dust here, but you can help it with a good clean filter. That will help with allergies, less dusting and extend the life of your equipment.”

Hamlin’s advice is to just set the thermostat where you are comfortable and leave it alone. He explains that if you keep changing the temperature, it ruins the equipment and will only cost you more when you go to pay your utility bill.

The post Demand for HVAC service heightens with chilly climate in Texas appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

By Katherine Ellison for Hothouse.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Twitchell Island, Sacramento County, California – Steve Deverel gazes out over a levee on the San Joaquin River to a buoy where half a dozen sea lions are barking. It’s a loud reminder that even here, 50 miles inland, some of California’s most productive farmland lies perilously close to the Pacific Ocean. At any moment, a weak spot in the more than 1,000 miles of earthen levees protecting islands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta could unleash a salty deluge, threatening not just crops, but the drinking water for as many as 27 million Californians.

Deverel, a Davis-based hydrologist, refers to this threat as “The Big Gulp,” a breach that would suck in tens of billions of gallons of river water, drawing ocean water in its wake. All it would take is some heavy rain, a moderate earthquake, or even hard-working gophers tunneling through earthen barriers first built in the late 1800s.

It wouldn’t be the first time such a disaster happened.

On a sunny day in June 1972, a levee failed without warning or apparent cause near Andrus Island, about an hour’s drive from San Francisco. Water ran four feet deep over the farmland. Thirty-foot cruisers and houseboats smashed against the embankments. Hundreds of homeowners fled rising waters, with several people seriously injured. In 2004-on another calm, sunny day-it happened again. This time the water turned 12,000 acres of prime California farmland into a brackish lake, costing $100 million in damages.

Deverel now hopes to save the Delta by flooding it before the Pacific can. And he wants to pay for it with carbon credits.

“Carbon-farming” in the wetlands

Deverel, 70, has spent three decades trying to head off the Big Gulp. Climate change is his chance. His project, funded to date by California state agencies and the University of California, has so far inundated 1,700 acres of Delta farmland on Twitchell and nearby Sherman island, transforming them into marshes of cattails and tule reeds. Each year, new plants growing in these restored wetlands will suck carbon dioxide (CO₂)-the most abundant greenhouse gas-out of the atmosphere, storing it in strata of accumulating muck that will help buttress the dikes in danger of collapsing.

The project passed its first important milestone on October 27, 2020, when the American Carbon Registry issued credits for 52,000 tons of CO₂ removed by the experiment, which is still in its very early stage. That makes this the first wetland project (and only one so far) to generate verified carbon credits in the US, according to Steve Crooks, a Sausalito, California-based wetlands scientist and global expert in the field of “carbon-farming” from coastal wetlands.

The Delta project is also one of very few such efforts around the world, yet its promise is enormous.

Even as they cover just 9% of the Earth’s surface, wetlands are the largest natural carbon sink on land, sequestering an estimated 35% of the world’s carbon stored on land, more than all other biomes combined. Since a majority of wetlands are degraded or destroyed, environmental scientists see restoring them as a huge potential source of carbon credits as countries and corporations ramp up their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Rehabilitating the earth’s wetlands would provide myriad benefits in addition to carbon sequestration, possibly even more environmentally useful than carbon projects in forestry.

Yet managing these landscapes is a lot more complicated-and expensive-than simply flooding fields or replanting trees. Deverel believes the Delta project has revealed a path forward. The key is a rich, brown crumbly soil known as peat.

The promise of peat

A few thousand years after the end of the last Ice Age, the Delta was covered by a marshy, freshwater inland sea. Over millennia, layers of moss, mud, and vegetation accumulated to form peat. Under the right conditions, peatlands can store vast amounts of carbon. Marshes “sequester” or store CO₂ through photosynthesis as they grow, and the carbon stays trapped in the plants as they die and decompose underwater. Once drained, however, peat can be fabulous for growing crops, as farmers who came here after the Gold Rush soon discovered. The farmers, known as “swamplanders,” hired Chinese laborers to build the levees and drain the marshes, and planted rows and rows of corn and alfalfa, much later adding other crops, including wine grapes, walnut and almond trees, cotton, sugar beets, and blueberries.

More than a century would pass before scientists realized the farmers were harvesting their own ruin.

The problem is known as “subsidence,” a gentle word for a sinister situation. When peat dries, it oxidizes and evaporates, or is swept away by the wind, steadily robbing the Delta islands of about an inch in height each year. As they shrink in volume, the islands provide less and less of a buffer against the water pressure on the aging levees.

Subsidence explains why you can stand on a grassy field here, some 300 feet from the levees’ edge, and look up to watch ships passing on the river. Some parts of Twitchell and other Delta islands are now more than 20 feet below sea level. Subsidence, and the growing pressure on the levees, also explain why there’s more to the threat than the specter of water someday coursing over the levees. In some areas it’s already seeping under them, says Deverel. That’s forcing farmers to fortify old embankments while continually draining their land.

There’s also a broader threat. Soggy peatlands can be powerful carbon sinks. All that changes when the peat dries out. As peat oxidizes, it releases stored CO₂. In the Delta, this translates to an area of about 150,000 acres of soil turned into “this weird little chimney in the middle of the state that is just pumping out carbon dioxide,” says Campbell Ingram, executive director of the Delta Conservancy, a state agency that is collaborating with Deverel on the carbon-credits project.

Over more than 30 years of careful measurements, Deverel has found that each year, on average, each of those acres of dried-peat farmland emits roughly ten tons of CO₂, roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of 217,000 gas-powered cars.

Deverel, Ingram, and their colleagues see this as an opportunity.

Inundating the land, and allowing the ancient bulrushes and cattails to return-or potentially cultivating rice-would stop those emissions immediately, and even store carbon as new plants grow. Deverel and Ingram hope the process could start to reverse the subsidence by adding as much as two inches of soil a year as watery plants die and form new peat. “It’s slow, yes-it could take 150 years to get back to sea-level,” says Ingram. “But every added foot reduces the pressure on the levees.”

Restoring Delta wetlands would have many other benefits as well. Healthy wetlands help filter freshwater, offer habitat for wildlife, and provide a buffer for flood control-all services increasingly in demand as climate change brings more devastating droughts and rising sea levels. In this way, the Delta project could shift the carbon credits paradigm, using the credits not only to reduce or “mitigate” greenhouse gas emissions but to help adapt to the inevitable results of climate change in coming years.

“This project is still in its early stages but we’re very hopeful about what it implies for California’s sustainability,” says Michelle Passero, director of climate and nature-based solutions for The Nature Conservancy. The international non-profit, which owns an entire Delta island, has recently begun working with Deverel to greatly expand the scope of his plan, converting 4,000 acres from corn to rice and another 1,000 to restore wetlands habitat. Passero says they hope to generate carbon credits from the project within the next few years, providing income to pay for more restoration, and ideally creating a model for others to follow.

To do so, however, the Delta’s defenders still need to overcome three daunting obstacles: the science, the expense, and the politics of wetlands conversion.

The Devil’s in the data

In the first US attempt to farm carbon in US wetlands, the scientific calculations didn’t add up.

In December 2013, Tierra Resources, a small environmental restoration firm based in New Orleans, announced that the American Carbon Registry had approved its “revolutionary new tool:” a “first of its kind” methodology to restore degraded wetlands in the Gulf of Mexico.

Seven years later, however, the company quietly canceled its pilot project in a Louisiana swamp. The problem was “high uncertainty with the data,” wrote Tierra Resources CEO Sarah Mack in an email. The ACR requires periodic monitoring reports, meaning carbon farmers must continually prove they’re doing what they initially promised.

Mack, who later consulted on the California Delta project, praised Deverel and colleagues for what she described as their pioneering work. “They showed it can be done,” she said, “and that is going to encourage other scientists to follow them.”

As Mack acknowledged, the Delta project has had some key advantages over her own effort. For one thing, after three decades of studying and measuring emissions from the land, Deverel has more scientific certainty. But more important is the problem of methane, a greenhouse gas that is about 25 times more powerful than CO2.

All wetlands emit methane, as anaerobic soil microbes digest growing plants. But Mack’s wetlands in the Gulf of Mexico lacked the key ingredient of peat. In peat wetlands, inundating the land-and stopping up those weird little chimneys-has the potential to reduce so much CO2 that it would more than compensate for new methane emissions, according to Deverel.

Peat’s promise is already inspiring some mega-projects in swamp forests, bogs, and fens, many thousands of miles away from the Delta. In Indonesia, the Katingan Metaya Project claims it is generating 7.5 million carbon credits per year from peat-rich forests, avoiding emissions equal to those of France. In Scotland, a fast-fashion billionaire is working on a project to farm carbon from peatlands on his extensive landholdings. Closer to home, in North Carolina, scientists have investigated the potential for a carbon farm on 10,000 acres of previously drained pocosins, wetland bogs with woody shrubs and sandy peat soil.

The clock is ticking. As peatlands increasingly dry out, those “weird little chimneys” are popping up all over the planet, potentially creating a dangerous feedback loop for climate change. That makes it all the more important that the Delta defenders find answers to the economic and political challenges of wetlands restoration.

Show me the money

Wetlands restoration is expensive, and the Delta carbon project is no exception. Over the past 12 years, California state agencies have spent nearly $17 million restoring and managing wetlands in the project area, according to Bryan Brock, an engineer for the California Department of Water Resources (DWR). That bill would have been much larger had the land not already been owned by DWR. Another $1.5 million was spent on research-related expenses, including 10 eddy covariance stations, which can cost $50,000 each, to measure gas flows and temperature changes over the wetlands.

Now, the biggest hurdle is making the project financially sustainable. For all its expense, the project has yet to produce any revenue. Carbon credits issued so far have gone to the project landowner, DWR, which can’t sell the credits due to rules forbidding profits from publicly funded projects, as Brock explains.

To finance more wetlands restoration, the Delta team must do the political work of convincing thousands of farmers to convert at least some of their land from profitable crops to marshes or rice, and then keep them that way for a minimum of 40 years. Carbon prices have been rising, but at less than $10/ton for the voluntary market, are still far from enough to change a lot of minds.

“It’s a bit ridiculous,” is how Bruce Blodgett, executive director of the San Joaquin Farm Bureau Federation, characterizes the Delta carbon-farming proposal. “Are we supposed to buy our seeds with carbon credits?”

Blodgett worries the state will step in and force farmers to participate. He insists the Delta farmers are doing just fine dealing with subsidence by paying property taxes to fund work on the levees and, as long as the water keeps flowing, he doesn’t want to change. “We have one area in the entire state of California that we know we can still be farming 150 years from now,” he says, “and they want to plant tules there.”

Yet Mother Nature increasingly has put her finger on the scales. As sea levels rise, that salty water seeping under the levees is already threatening crops, while farmers must pay more to keep draining their land. The increasing threats from climate change may also eventually move governments to act more aggressively, which could raise the price of carbon credits and provide another inducement for the farmers. “If we get to $100 a ton, that solves the problem,” says Deverel.

In the meantime, he continues with his research and plans for the next phase of the project, on The Nature Conservancy land, continuing with the work that has now consumed more than half of his life. Progress so far has been small and slow, and maybe even a little nerve-wracking if you’re the sort who tends to doom-scroll climate news.

But Deverel isn’t one for doom-scrolling. “This is what I am called to do now,” he says. “I don’t need to worry about the entire stairway, just the next step.”

Katherine Ellison wrote this article for Hothouse.

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By Elizabeth McGowan for Energy News Network.
Broadcast version by Edwin J. Viera for Virginia News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

The hands-on solar panel lesson for rookies at Sankofa Community Orchard in mid-January might have been a bust if student Mary Lewis hadn’t shown up with her A-game — and her F-150 pickup truck.

When the team was short a power drill, Lewis scurried to her trusty toolbox. Then, for a tape measure. And yet again for exterior screws.

The 58-year-old’s preparedness proved integral to completing the installation of a six-panel array designed to power the water irrigation system at the urban agricultural venture on the city’s south side.

Lewis, owner of a home repair business, was one of 15 enrollees in a week-long class this month geared at diversifying the clean energy workforce. 

Richmond resident Richard Walker brainstormed the free solar training to ensure that Black residents and other marginalized communities aren’t left behind as renewable energy booms in Virginia. It’s a more recent offshoot of a nonprofit, Bridging the Gap, the 63-year-old founded more than a dozen years ago.

In June 2019, he debuted the training program as an environmental justice experiment in a church basement in majority-Black, rural Union Hill to counter Dominion Energy’s proposal to construct the Atlantic Coast Pipeline through Buckingham County.

“We’ve been remiss in educating folks about green energy in our neighborhoods,” Walker said about his early attempts to heal a rift over the gas pipeline in a community where his family has deep roots. “This is where people need to be exposed to these possibilities.”

He moved subsequent trainings to the state’s capital, where Walker has partnered with Richmond’s Office of Community Wealth Building and its Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities.

Lewis, also a real estate agent and investor, is enthusiastic about sharing what she absorbs with her network of personal and business connections.

“This is something I believe in,” Lewis said. “Solar just seems like a natural next step.”

Lewis and her classmates spent most of the week of Jan. 10 hunkered down in a training room at the Annie Giles Community Resource Center near downtown Richmond sponging up photovoltaic fundamentals from newly minted instructor Duane Cunningham.

The intensive course covers the ABCs — arcs, breakers, and charge controllers — but also delves into the intricacies of components, sizing principles, mechanical design, performance analysis, and troubleshooting.

Last year, Walker hand-picked Cunningham because of the 46-year-old’s electrical engineering degree, IT-heavy background, and ability to translate technical gobbledygook into comprehensible concepts for laypeople. 

The California native settled in Hampton, Virginia, three years ago to begin work as a data center manager for a defense contractor affiliated with Langley Air Force Base.

Cunningham was receptive to Walker’s overture because overseas travel for the military through 2016 had exposed him to how countries as varied as Germany, Australia, and Kuwait were embracing renewable energy. The two met because Cunningham also volunteers for a separate, youth-oriented nonprofit in Buckingham County. 

Walker had recruited author and professional trainer Sean White, a Californian with decades of international experience, to teach the initial Solar 101 class in Union Hill. As well, White taught follow-up classes in November 2019 and last October.

Cunningham enrolled in the October class and absorbed every detail. To qualify to teach, he had to ace the gold standard exam offered by the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners. Passing it gives newcomers clout and access to jobs anywhere.

What troubles Walker is that of the 30-plus graduates in the first three sessions, Cunningham is the only graduate to even attempt the exam.

Enrollees have consistently been a cross-section of men and women ranging in age from their early 20s to late 50s. Some have college degrees and established careers, while others had struggled in the job market after being released from prison.

“That’s still part of the learning curve,” Walker said. “We don’t have a placement rate yet because the glitch is the folks we get in the training class don’t seem to have the confidence to take the test.”

‘I can see solar as a career path’

Cunningham is determined to alter that pattern. 

“I grew up in Compton, so it’s not foreign to me where they have come from,” Cunningham said about his early exposure to hardscrabble California. “I have family members who are incarcerated and friends who have lost their lives making bad decisions.”

Each day, he sandwiched pep talks between reviews that summarized lessons into bite-size nuggets and dissected sample exam questions.

“It all begins up here,” Cunningham said, tapping his temple. “They all have the ability to pass the test. I told them that if I’m going to give you 100% here, I need to know you gave yourself a chance.”

Student Reggie Davis is receptive to such an opportunity. He figures it’s kismet that the invitation to join Cunningham’s class arrived when he began noticing how rooftop solar was flourishing in his Richmond neighborhood.

For the last five months, the 53-year-old has honed his landscaping skills as part of the city’s workforce development program. It’s geared to help unemployed and formerly incarcerated residents transition to jobs.

“I’m grateful to be exposed to this,” said Davis, who buried his nose in his notes each evening as a refresher. “Now I don’t want to limit myself. I can see solar as a career path instead of just a job.”

He appreciated Cunningham’s willingness to apply solar lessons to real-life situations.

“Yes, we’re learning a lot, but once I got the verbiage down, it’s really not that hard,” he said. “Duane’s reviews made me more comfortable. He wanted this information to stick.”

Davis, raised in Florida, New York, Illinois, and Louisiana, landed in Richmond in the late 1980s to major in business at Virginia Union, a historically black university.

That degree — and a starting spot on the basketball team — never materialized as a “detour” dealing cocaine and other drugs turned into convictions that sent him to state prison for close to 12 years.

“I’m through with that life,” he said. Since his 2003 release, he worked at Hewlett-Packard for a decade before starting his own lawn care business.

Davis knows that despite the solar industry’s earnest efforts to attract more people of color, it’s rare to find Black men such as himself in that workforce.

He praised Walker for punching through those barriers.

“We need people like Richard to not only bring us into a new world,” he said about his classmates, “but to bring them, the solar developers, to our world.”

Cunningham had helped to install the first three panels at Sankofa last autumn. Davis piggybacked on that start by applying his new knowledge to add another trio of flush-mounted panels atop a shipping container and a shed.

The farm, situated on roughly two acres of parks and recreation land near Reedy Creek, is designed to address social and racial imbalances from the ground up, said Duron Chavis, food activist and executive director of The Happily Nature Day, a nonprofit.

Enormous colorful murals serve as backdrops for dozens of fruit trees, fruiting shrubs, vegetable plots, and a beekeeping operation. The harvests are destined for the community. Gardeners distribute 4-by-6 foot raised beds and soil so neighbors can grow their own food too.

Chavis’ goal is to be a model of climate change resiliency by incorporating low-impact systems to collect rainwater, manage stormwater runoff, and harvest energy from the sun. 

Carving a niche in central Virginia

Personal setbacks motivated Walker, a professional mental health counselor, to invent Bridging the Gap as a job conduit for Virginians wrestling with addiction, incarceration, and chronic homelessness.

After serving concurrent, two-year federal and state prison sentences for cocaine possession and fraud years ago, nobody would hire him. And he faced such rejection with a bachelor’s degree.  

Walker opted to fold green workforce development and environmental justice into his nonprofit’s mission after watching yet another Black community — his own — be saddled with the threat of polluting fossil fuel infrastructure.

He can trace at least five generations of his family back to Union Hill, where free Blacks and former slaves settled in Buckingham County after the Civil War. It’s about 70 miles west of Richmond.

In January 2020, a federal appeals court put the kibosh on a compressor station that had divided neighbors when Dominion sited it in Union Hill. About six months later, the utility giant pulled the plug on the entire questionable pipeline project that would have bisected Virginia for roughly 300 of its 600 miles. It would have pumped hydraulically fractured gas from West Virginia to North Carolina. 

While Walker’s solar training went dormant during the pandemic, he couldn’t bear for it to be a casualty of COVID-19. 

A large grant from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation allows him to issue $1,000 scholarships to each enrollee. More recently, he’s attracted smaller sums from sources in Alexandria and Charlottesville and is intent on pursuing federal dollars.

If the General Assembly approves an $80,000 appropriation allotted to the Virginia Community College System as part of the state budget by Del. Jeff Bourne, a Democrat from Richmond, Walker would have access to that money for more training. 

Longtime backers include the Virginia Environmental Justice Collaborative, Virginia Interfaith Power & Light, and programs under the University of Richmond umbrella.

“I want to carve my niche in central Virginia as the program that provides free training,” said Walker, aware that competitors charge enrollees. “If I can get full-time instructors, what I can do is limitless.” 

Hiring White was expensive but gave the class credibility. Now that Walker has permission from White to adopt and adapt his original class curriculum, he can save some money and promote home-grown talent. As well, he has added a unit on energy efficiency to keep the class fresh.

To dovetail with the eight to 10 classes he proposes offering annually in Richmond, he’s collaborating with Bridging the Gap colleagues to open a Green Jobs Workforce Center this spring in Buckingham County’s Dillwyn, near Union Hill. Its wheelhouse will be training in solar, plumbing, electrical wiring, fiber optics, and heating and air conditioning.

“Solar has taken flight, but related jobs haven’t been open to communities of color and low-income Virginians,” Walker said about addressing inequities. “Training can lead to decent-paying jobs in these fields.”

Lewis, the recent graduate with an established career, isn’t intrigued by “getting on people’s roofs to install solar panels,” but is toying with the idea of sales.

Her desire to explore solar’s intricacies in Walker’s class was piqued because she put a four-panel, 100-watt system on her garage roof several years ago. She’s thrilled by the drop in her electric bill and, now, has the know-how to expand. Next, she wants to install a ground-mount system to power her house in Chesterfield County, south of Richmond.

In class, the go-getter peppered Cunningham with questions from her front-row seat.

“It has been a super class because it’s gone so deep and I’m kind of sorry the week is coming to an end,” Lewis said. “I wish I would’ve known all this 15 years ago because I’d be reaping the benefits now.”

Lewis is accustomed to navigating around obstacles. For instance, 15 years ago when she owned a dump truck company, she accepted a dare from one of her drivers to earn a commercial driver’s license. She practiced and studied until she passed the test. 

That same tenacity is motivating her to sign up for the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners exam. Walker’s program covers the fee and students have 10 tries to pass the 85-question, multiple-choice exam.

When reached by phone the week after the class ended, Lewis was headed to a church to replace a bathroom urinal. She’s been diligent about studying, she said, and is scheduling a test appointment later this month.

“When I start something, I’m going to finish it,” Lewis said. “I’m just not a quitter.”

Elizabeth McGowan wrote this article for Energy News Network.

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By Sakshi Udavant for Next City.
Broadcast version by Edwin J. Viera for New York News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Urban areas in US cities are estimated to lose an average of 36 million trees every year. This results in economic losses of up to $786 million and risks having an adverse impact on already worsening climate change.

The worse part? Many of these trees are considered “waste” and sent off to landfills. “More wood from cities goes into landfills than is harvested from US National Forests,” says J. Morgan Grove, a research forester at Baltimore Field Station, USDA Forest Service. “40% of this wood can be reused for furniture, flooring, outdoor play areas, mulch, compost, soil improvements, bioenergy and even carbon sources for growing mushrooms.”

That’s what “reforestation hubs” are doing: Saving urban trees from heading to landfills by finding new ways to repurpose the wood. These wooden products can be sold to fund further tree plantations. This cycle reduces urban wood waste, saves money, helps increase forest cover, and most importantly, keeps carbon out of the environment.

“If we recycled all the trees that came down in US cities each year, roughly 20 million tons of carbon could be kept out of the atmosphere, equivalent to taking over four million gas-powered cars off the road for a year,” says Ben Christensen, CEO and co-founder of Cambium Carbon, a New York-based startup working on reforesting America by creating the aforementioned wood repurposing-reforesting cycle.

Reforestation Hub, an initiative by The Nature Conservancy (a global environmental organization) and American Forests (a US-based forest conservation nonprofit), estimates up to 133 million acres of formerly forested lands in the United States could be reforested, absorbing 333 million metric tons of carbon per year, which is equivalent to keeping 72 million cars off the road. That’s why the organization calls it “a low-tech, scalable and proven solution to climate change.”

Creating a Circular Economy

Organizations like Cambium Carbon play a huge role in making this circular economy possible. For instance, Cambium Carbon works at three critical points: 1) saving the trees from ending up in landfills when they’re first cut down or have fallen, 2) collaborating with millers and sawyers who can use the “wasted” wood, and 3) working with architects, builders and furniture brands who provide the market to incentivize salvage. This way, fallen urban trees go from being a “landfill filler” to a valuable commodity that creates resources for increasing the declining forest cover in US cities.

The organization claims to have diverted more than 45 tons of wood from landfills, moving about 291,000 board feet of wood or roughly 489 tons of finished product. They’re now starting a new furniture line with Sabai Design, a sustainable furniture brand in Philadelphia, and planting new trees with the Sacramento Tree Foundation and the Baltimore Tree Trust. Their goal is to plant one billion new trees across the U.S. by 2030, the team mentioned in an interview with Next Pittsburgh.

Cambium Carbon is not alone. Other organizations like Cities4Forests and the Arbor Day Foundation are working with local officials to create the nation’s first reforestation hubs by 2022 through a TNC Natural Climate Change Solutions Accelerator Grant.

Is the Solution Worth the Costs?

While collecting fallen trees from urban spaces and using them to make locally-sold wooden products sounds like the perfect idea to reduce wastage and make supply chains more sustainable, all of this is easier said than done.

One drawback is that the barriers and costs of these alternative wood waste programs may outweigh the benefits, says Melissa McHale, associate professor of Urban Ecology and Sustainability, UBC Faculty of Forestry. “Many cities lack the space to store, sort and process the wood waste, and the cost of creating a space like this, in terms of dollars and time, is prohibitive,” says McHale, who also served on the leadership team for the United States Forest Service’s Denver Urban Field Station (USFS DUFS). “Many cities do not have the ability to maintain and remove all of their problem or dead trees and depend on private companies to do so. Private companies, especially the smaller businesses, often do not have the time and equipment needed to remove a tree whole and transport it wherever it needs to go.”

Fortunately, several organizations are stepping up with resources and ideas to make the wood repurposing process more efficient. For instance, Reforestation Hub maps out “relatively low-cost and feasible options to restore forests.” The web-based tool highlights several key areas for affordable reforestation like large open patches within forests, croplands with challenging soils and post-burn landscapes. It also offers handy access to reforestation resources like links to find a professional forester, find your state’s urban and community tree coordinator and access published articles on cost-effective tree planting.

Beyond helping the planet for years to come, initiatives like these also support local communities. Cambium Carbon has created a national network of local producers and national buyers to purchase locally salvaged, locally milled wood, which further funds local tree planting. For example, the communal tables in the entrepreneurship hubs on Towson University’s campus are made of wood that would have otherwise gone to waste. Similarly, the trellis in the Visit Baltimore HQ office was made using “waste” now repurposed into what the team calls “Carbon Smart Wood.”

“It’s a big opportunity to put people first and to have projects that are not just good for the planet but are really good for communities,” CEO Ben Christensen said in an interview with the Arbor Day Foundation. “[We’re] creating systems that are helping to address problems like lack of employment and helping to support economic recovery coming out of COVID.”

Cambium Carbon has employed 25 workers while also creating additional employment and partnership opportunities for several local carpenters and woodworkers through their sales and inventory management platform, Traece. Since the wood is sourced, repurposed and sold locally, workers in the region find more projects (like working on the Towson University tables) and resources (companies buying the new wooden products) to generate revenue that they wouldn’t have access to if the fallen trees just went to a landfill.

Sakshi Udavant wrote this article for Next City.

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New York has seen growth in offshore wind investments, which advocates hope will continue into the new year.

In 2022, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a $500 million investment in offshore wind for cleaner energy, as part of a goal to develop 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind power by 2035.

Another step forward for the industry is redevelopment of the 73-acre South Brooklyn Marine Terminal for the staging of construction, operations and maintenance for several offshore wind projects.

Fred Zalcman, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, described other highlights.

“We’ve seen significant developments on several fronts,” Zalcman outlined. “First, we are seeing the start of construction on New York’s first utility-scale offshore wind project, the South Fork Wind Farm, which will be 130 megawatts; serve over 70,000 people on Long Island.”

He added there have been real estate commitments to develop a National Offshore Wind Training Center, and agreements between developers and environmental groups to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale during wind-project construction.

Given many offshore wind projects take a long time to develop, some work which began in 2022 will carry over into the new year. Zalcman noted the work should pick up, especially at certain ports, and there are some innovations he expects the state to give a closer look.

“The state is also looking now at the potential for offshore wind in the deeper ocean environment,” Zalcman pointed out. “These will be sites situated off the coast of New York, and potentially deploying new innovative technologies called ‘floating wind.’ “

While he’s eager to see the project develop in the new year, Zalcman expects to encounter growing pains as well. He mentioned supply-chain issues, inflation, and other economic challenges for the industry.

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The post Carbon Credit versus the Huge Gulp / Public Information Service appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

PHOENIX (Stacker) – From New York City to the Navajo Nation, people across the country are facing climate-driven water scarcity, exorbitant utility bills, aging or incomplete infrastructure, community disinvestment, and political inertia, all of which limit or completely cut off Access to essential water resources.

America’s water gap exacts a significant price on the well-being of individuals and the overall economy. More than $8.5 billion is lost annually as a result of time spent collecting water, high health care bills related to injuries, waterborne illness, and mental health challenges associated with water insecurity, according to a June 2022 report from nonprofit DigDeep. The water gap persists in all 50 states, from urban to remote communities, but it is not socially or geographically random. Water insecurity is associated with other socioeconomic disparities and disproportionately impacts communities of color. According to DigDeep, Indigenous households are 19 times more likely than white households to live without plumbing. Black and Latino households are twice as likely.

While rural homes are the most likely to lack running water, the majority of Americans residing in unplumbed homes live in cities. Plumbing poverty in urban areas is getting worse. Researchers found the average tenant in San Francisco living without piped water spent 44% of their income on rent in 2017. Water connection fees in San Francisco can cost several thousands of dollars—a financial burden low-income renters cannot afford, and negligent landlords may not want to pay. While urban residents considered “plumbing poor” are hidden in plain sight, rural residents impacted most severely by the water gap are almost entirely hidden from the nation’s collective consciousness. In colonias along Texas’ southwestern border with Mexico, tens of thousands of people live without access to running water or sewer service. Any water they can access is believed to be unsafe, and contaminated with arsenic, E. coli, and other harmful toxins.

Over the last 40 years, federal water infrastructure funding has fallen from 63% to roughly 9% leaving communities without the financial resources to upgrade and expand water and sewage systems. However, the White House says the recent infusion of money via President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Job Act will speed up progress in prioritized underserved communities. Passed in November 2021, the law allocates roughly $50 billion for programs designed to improve state and local drinking water and wastewater treatment infrastructure. The Environmental Protection Agency also distributed $154 million to tribal territories and Native Alaskan villages. The average per-state funding for all 50 states was $138.7 million. Even for the millions of Americans with access to basic plumbing and running water, utility bills are unaffordable. A 2018 analysis by the Guardian found that across a sampling of 12 major US cities, water and sewage bills had increased by an average of 80% in just eight years, with low-income households bearing the greatest burden.

In 11 out of the 12 cities included in the study, 100% of people with incomes below 50% of the federal poverty threshold could not afford their water bills. According to the study, water bills exceeding 4% of household income are considered, for this analysis, unaffordable. This problem is not isolated just to the lowest-income households. Over the next eight years, average Americans neglected by federal funding are likely to feel the pressure of high-cost utilities in cities with low-quality water and wasteful infrastructure.

Stacker determined the 10 metro areas in the US most lacking in complete plumbing facilities based on the percentage of people in each metro without this basic access. The data is sourced from the 2020 five-year American Community Survey US Census Bureau. The census question asks whether a housing unit has hot and cold running water, a bathtub or shower, as well as other questions about kitchen appliances. Puerto Rico was excluded from these results. At a county-by-county level, the reasons why people lack access to basic plumbing are not closely or consistently tracked. Where we could find specifics, we have listed those here. Where we could not, we’ve provided contextual information about the state of that metro area’s water and sewage infrastructure.

#10. Dubuque, IA

• Total housing units: 41,518 (93.1% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 290 (0.8% of occupied housing units)

Throughout the state, Iowans are at an increased risk of water contamination. A 2017 study revealed that 1 in 5 infants in the state is born with high levels of lead in their blood, pointing to the dangers of tainted drinking water. Dubuque, however, reported no public drinking water violations in 2021.

Agricultural pollution is a major source of contamination for private well owners, resulting in water with harmful levels of bacteria and nitrates. Dubuque residents identified drinking water protection from private sources as one of the most critical health concerns in the next 3-5 years, according to the county’s Poverty Prevention Plan.

#9. Houma-Thibodaux, LA

• Total housing units: 87,081 (88.4% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 711 (0.9% of occupied housing units)

Louisiana’s southeastern parishes, like Lafourche and Terrebonne, are prone to hurricane damage, which can knock out critical community infrastructure. Beyond threats to water and sewage systems from natural disasters, the state’s water quality is a consistent problem, with upwards of 1,600 boil advisories across the state annually.

Louisiana will receive $7 billion from Biden’s infrastructure bill, with nearly $6 billion earmarked for roads, highways, and bridges. The remainder will be spent on water infrastructure improvements, among other things.

#8th. Laredo, TX

• Total housing units: 84,553 (90.3% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 722 (0.9% of occupied housing units)

Laredo made headlines early in 2022 when a water line break caused nearly two weeks of water shortages and boil advisories for thousands of residents. While this was a short-term problem amid a much larger water crisis, it is a prime example of the impact of aging, unmaintained water infrastructure.

Webb County, where Laredo is located, was previously embroiled in controversy when the $12 million Rio Bravo Water Treatment Plant opened without properly functioning systems. The plan was intended to provide clean drinking water to 8,000 people in neighboring towns. Instead, plant operators falsified water quality reports, permitting substandard, unsafe water to flow through the system and into the homes of residents.

#7. Hammond, LA

• Total housing units: 56,449 (86.0% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 431 (0.9% of occupied housing units)

Like many other Louisiana regions, Hammond is not spared from the damage and devastation caused by natural disasters. In the wake of Hurricane Ida, sewage system breakdowns were a persistent problem in the region. Neighboring St. Tammany Parish, where almost all residents use bottled water due to poor piped water quality, has received $23 million to improve its water system.

#6. Grant’s Pass, OR

• Total housing units: 39,362 (93.0% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 312 (0.9% of occupied housing units)

In 2018, Grants Pass began replacing its nearly 86-year-old water treatment plant with a new facility, acknowledging that, while it is still doing its job adequately, the old plant would not be able to withstand an earthquake.

The new plant is expected to be finished by the end of 2023. The city has also undertaken a $20 million wastewater treatment project. As a result of these major infrastructure projects, Grants Pass residents will see an approximate $20 increase in their utility bills over the course of the next four years.

#5. McAllen-Edinburg Mission, TX

• Total housing units: 281,380 (86.7% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 2,961 (1.2% of occupied housing units)

Leaky canals supplied by a diminishing Rio Grande River are creating water scarcity issues in the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metro. These canals that supply the region lose about 40% of the water they carry due to aging infrastructure.

Water officials predict the demand for water in the area will double over the next 50 years as the population continues to grow. The region has already experienced rapid population growth between 1990 and 2020, increasing sixfold to 871,000.

#4. Anchorage, AK

• Total housing units: 160,311 (86.7% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 1,824 (1.3% of occupied housing units)

Alaska’s extreme environment makes piping water to remote regions—and even relatively urban areas like Anchorage—challenging and expensive for both builders and residents paying the bills.

Historically, installing indoor plumbing in a single home could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. As an alternative, people may use honey buckets—large buckets to collect waste. But this type of sewage disposal is conducive to spreading disease. Invasive pneumococcal rates in southwestern Alaska are among the highest in the world due to a lack of running water and proper sanitation.

#3. Farmington, NM

• Total housing units: 51,299 (85.0% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 926 (2.1% of occupied housing units)

Farmington is situated on off-reservation Navajo trust land, and between three American Indian reservations belonging to the Navajo, the Ute Mountain Indians, and the Southern Utes. A short drive away, more than 40% of Farmington’s neighbors in Navajo Nation households do not have running water in their homes and 30% lack access to clean drinking water. Instead, they must haul water, sometimes from Farmington, for their cooking and sanitation needs.

Lack of water and plumbing puts residents at greater risk for infectious diseases, and it is in large part why the Navajo Nation reported a higher per capita COVID-19 mortality rate than any state in the US

#2. Flagstaff, AZ

• Total housing units: 66,807 (73.4% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 1,749 (3.6% of occupied housing units)

Coconino County, home to Flagstaff, relies on groundwater for 70% of its water supply. As climate change and population growth put pressure on various water sources throughout the state, residents in Flagstaff and beyond will face increasing water scarcity in the coming decades.

Longtime Flagstaff residents are familiar with this issue. In 2002, the Upper Lake Mary reservoir, from which Flagstaff got a significant portion of its water supply, dried out almost completely due to drought, causing shortages.

#1. Fairbanks, AK

• Total housing units: 44,270 (81.8% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 1,980 (5.5% of occupied housing units)

In parts of Fairbanks, permafrost keeps the ground frozen year-round, making it impossible for builders to lay water and septic systems. As a result, people turn to “dry cabins”—housing units without any plumbing—for the sake of practicality and as part of a lifestyle. The Fairbanks region has a large dry cabin community.

Immediately to the north of Fairbanks is the vast Yukon-Koyukuk region, which has the nation’s highest total percentage of homes with inadequate plumbing due to its harsh environment and inaccessibility.

Copyright 2022 Stacker via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. This article has been re-published pursuant to a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.

The post Metros with the most individuals with out fundamental plumbing service, together with piped consuming water and a rest room appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

PHOENIX (Stacker) – From New York City to the Navajo Nation, people across the country are facing climate-driven water scarcity, exorbitant utility bills, aging or incomplete infrastructure, community disinvestment, and political inertia, all of which limit or completely cut off Access to essential water resources.

America’s water gap exacts a significant price on the well-being of individuals and the overall economy. More than $8.5 billion is lost annually as a result of time spent collecting water, high health care bills related to injuries, waterborne illness, and mental health challenges associated with water insecurity, according to a June 2022 report from nonprofit DigDeep. The water gap persists in all 50 states, from urban to remote communities, but it is not socially or geographically random. Water insecurity is associated with other socioeconomic disparities and disproportionately impacts communities of color. According to DigDeep, Indigenous households are 19 times more likely than white households to live without plumbing. Black and Latino households are twice as likely.

While rural homes are the most likely to lack running water, the majority of Americans residing in unplumbed homes live in cities. Plumbing poverty in urban areas is getting worse. Researchers found the average tenant in San Francisco living without piped water spent 44% of their income on rent in 2017. Water connection fees in San Francisco can cost several thousands of dollars—a financial burden low-income renters cannot afford, and negligent landlords may not want to pay. While urban residents considered “plumbing poor” are hidden in plain sight, rural residents impacted most severely by the water gap are almost entirely hidden from the nation’s collective consciousness. In colonias along Texas’ southwestern border with Mexico, tens of thousands of people live without access to running water or sewer service. Any water they can access is believed to be unsafe, and contaminated with arsenic, E. coli, and other harmful toxins.

Over the last 40 years, federal water infrastructure funding has fallen from 63% to roughly 9% leaving communities without the financial resources to upgrade and expand water and sewage systems. However, the White House says the recent infusion of money via President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Job Act will speed up progress in prioritized underserved communities. Passed in November 2021, the law allocates roughly $50 billion for programs designed to improve state and local drinking water and wastewater treatment infrastructure. The Environmental Protection Agency also distributed $154 million to tribal territories and Native Alaskan villages. The average per-state funding for all 50 states was $138.7 million. Even for the millions of Americans with access to basic plumbing and running water, utility bills are unaffordable. A 2018 analysis by the Guardian found that across a sampling of 12 major US cities, water and sewage bills had increased by an average of 80% in just eight years, with low-income households bearing the greatest burden.

In 11 out of the 12 cities included in the study, 100% of people with incomes below 50% of the federal poverty threshold could not afford their water bills. According to the study, water bills exceeding 4% of household income are considered, for this analysis, unaffordable. This problem is not isolated just to the lowest-income households. Over the next eight years, average Americans neglected by federal funding are likely to feel the pressure of high-cost utilities in cities with low-quality water and wasteful infrastructure.

Stacker determined the 10 metro areas in the US most lacking in complete plumbing facilities based on the percentage of people in each metro without this basic access. The data is sourced from the 2020 five-year American Community Survey US Census Bureau. The census question asks whether a housing unit has hot and cold running water, a bathtub or shower, as well as other questions about kitchen appliances. Puerto Rico was excluded from these results. At a county-by-county level, the reasons why people lack access to basic plumbing are not closely or consistently tracked. Where we could find specifics, we have listed those here. Where we could not, we’ve provided contextual information about the state of that metro area’s water and sewage infrastructure.

#10. Dubuque, IA

• Total housing units: 41,518 (93.1% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 290 (0.8% of occupied housing units)

Throughout the state, Iowans are at an increased risk of water contamination. A 2017 study revealed that 1 in 5 infants in the state is born with high levels of lead in their blood, pointing to the dangers of tainted drinking water. Dubuque, however, reported no public drinking water violations in 2021.

Agricultural pollution is a major source of contamination for private well owners, resulting in water with harmful levels of bacteria and nitrates. Dubuque residents identified drinking water protection from private sources as one of the most critical health concerns in the next 3-5 years, according to the county’s Poverty Prevention Plan.

#9. Houma-Thibodaux, LA

• Total housing units: 87,081 (88.4% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 711 (0.9% of occupied housing units)

Louisiana’s southeastern parishes, like Lafourche and Terrebonne, are prone to hurricane damage, which can knock out critical community infrastructure. Beyond threats to water and sewage systems from natural disasters, the state’s water quality is a consistent problem, with upwards of 1,600 boil advisories across the state annually.

Louisiana will receive $7 billion from Biden’s infrastructure bill, with nearly $6 billion earmarked for roads, highways, and bridges. The remainder will be spent on water infrastructure improvements, among other things.

#8th. Laredo, TX

• Total housing units: 84,553 (90.3% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 722 (0.9% of occupied housing units)

Laredo made headlines early in 2022 when a water line break caused nearly two weeks of water shortages and boil advisories for thousands of residents. While this was a short-term problem amid a much larger water crisis, it is a prime example of the impact of aging, unmaintained water infrastructure.

Webb County, where Laredo is located, was previously embroiled in controversy when the $12 million Rio Bravo Water Treatment Plant opened without properly functioning systems. The plan was intended to provide clean drinking water to 8,000 people in neighboring towns. Instead, plant operators falsified water quality reports, permitting substandard, unsafe water to flow through the system and into the homes of residents.

#7. Hammond, LA

• Total housing units: 56,449 (86.0% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 431 (0.9% of occupied housing units)

Like many other Louisiana regions, Hammond is not spared from the damage and devastation caused by natural disasters. In the wake of Hurricane Ida, sewage system breakdowns were a persistent problem in the region. Neighboring St. Tammany Parish, where almost all residents use bottled water due to poor piped water quality, has received $23 million to improve its water system.

#6. Grant’s Pass, OR

• Total housing units: 39,362 (93.0% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 312 (0.9% of occupied housing units)

In 2018, Grants Pass began replacing its nearly 86-year-old water treatment plant with a new facility, acknowledging that, while it is still doing its job adequately, the old plant would not be able to withstand an earthquake.

The new plant is expected to be finished by the end of 2023. The city has also undertaken a $20 million wastewater treatment project. As a result of these major infrastructure projects, Grants Pass residents will see an approximate $20 increase in their utility bills over the course of the next four years.

#5. McAllen-Edinburg Mission, TX

• Total housing units: 281,380 (86.7% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 2,961 (1.2% of occupied housing units)

Leaky canals supplied by a diminishing Rio Grande River are creating water scarcity issues in the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metro. These canals that supply the region lose about 40% of the water they carry due to aging infrastructure.

Water officials predict the demand for water in the area will double over the next 50 years as the population continues to grow. The region has already experienced rapid population growth between 1990 and 2020, increasing sixfold to 871,000.

#4. Anchorage, AK

• Total housing units: 160,311 (86.7% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 1,824 (1.3% of occupied housing units)

Alaska’s extreme environment makes piping water to remote regions—and even relatively urban areas like Anchorage—challenging and expensive for both builders and residents paying the bills.

Historically, installing indoor plumbing in a single home could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. As an alternative, people may use honey buckets—large buckets to collect waste. But this type of sewage disposal is conducive to spreading disease. Invasive pneumococcal rates in southwestern Alaska are among the highest in the world due to a lack of running water and proper sanitation.

#3. Farmington, NM

• Total housing units: 51,299 (85.0% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 926 (2.1% of occupied housing units)

Farmington is situated on off-reservation Navajo trust land, and between three American Indian reservations belonging to the Navajo, the Ute Mountain Indians, and the Southern Utes. A short drive away, more than 40% of Farmington’s neighbors in Navajo Nation households do not have running water in their homes and 30% lack access to clean drinking water. Instead, they must haul water, sometimes from Farmington, for their cooking and sanitation needs.

Lack of water and plumbing puts residents at greater risk for infectious diseases, and it is in large part why the Navajo Nation reported a higher per capita COVID-19 mortality rate than any state in the US

#2. Flagstaff, AZ

• Total housing units: 66,807 (73.4% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 1,749 (3.6% of occupied housing units)

Coconino County, home to Flagstaff, relies on groundwater for 70% of its water supply. As climate change and population growth put pressure on various water sources throughout the state, residents in Flagstaff and beyond will face increasing water scarcity in the coming decades.

Longtime Flagstaff residents are familiar with this issue. In 2002, the Upper Lake Mary reservoir, from which Flagstaff got a significant portion of its water supply, dried out almost completely due to drought, causing shortages.

#1. Fairbanks, AK

• Total housing units: 44,270 (81.8% occupied)
• Households lacking complete plumbing facilities: 1,980 (5.5% of occupied housing units)

In parts of Fairbanks, permafrost keeps the ground frozen year-round, making it impossible for builders to lay water and septic systems. As a result, people turn to “dry cabins”—housing units without any plumbing—for the sake of practicality and as part of a lifestyle. The Fairbanks region has a large dry cabin community.

Immediately to the north of Fairbanks is the vast Yukon-Koyukuk region, which has the nation’s highest total percentage of homes with inadequate plumbing due to its harsh environment and inaccessibility.

Copyright 2022 Stacker via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. This article has been re-published pursuant to a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.

The post Metros with the most individuals with out fundamental plumbing service, together with piped consuming water and a bathroom appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.