Editor’s note: Brownsville, Texas – “Element Fuels has received the necessary permitting to construct and operate a refinery capable of producing in excess of 160,000 barrels, or approximately 6.7 million gallons, per day of finished gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel,” said Founder and Co-CEO John Calce. “A permit for a greenfield refinery of this size, scope, and functionality has not been granted in the United States since the 1970’s. This speaks to the innovative approaches we are taking to address climate and sustainability concerns in cleaner, greener ways that are new to the refinery space.”

Though Marathon was built in 1976, it is considered the last significant oil refinery built in the United States.

That’s partly because of community opposition to new refineries, a position that people in Garyville understood well last month.

“It’s hard to explain the mixed emotions that come with living in the conditions that we have been forced to live in here,” said Robert Taylor, who lives in the vicinity of the plant, in the community of Reserve. “Why are we designated as a sacrifice zone?”

By Jim Haugen / WAGING NONVIOLENCE

“We were wondering if Mayor Paine is available?” I asked. My words were muffled by the dog mascot costume I was wearing. Next to me was a canvasser and the two camera operators filming us. We were at City Hall in Superior, Wisconsin on April 25 to spread the word about Husky Friends — the name we’d given to a so-called community outreach initiative from Husky Energy, owner of the local refinery that exploded in 2018 and triggered an evacuation of much of the city. With the refinery possibly reopening, Husky Friends was there to “assuage residents’ concerns.”

“Oh sure! Let me see if he has a moment,” the receptionist responded.

Wait, what!? This wasn’t supposed to be happening. We thought it’d be interesting to get footage of a dog mascot trying to meet the mayor, but we never thought he’d actually come out and talk with us.

He stepped out of his office, and we haltingly introduced Husky Friends, explaining that we were there to “address some of the community concerns about the use of hydrogen fluoride,” or HF —  a lethal chemical used in oil refining that was almost released during the 2018 explosion, putting the entire populations of both Superior and nearby Duluth, Minnesota at grave risk. Cenovus Energy, which recently acquired Husky Energy, is rebuilding the refinery and intends to continue using the chemical.

Mayor Paine took a pamphlet, thanked us for coming and went back into his office.

The footage of this meeting would later show up on evening news segments on the local CBS and NBC affiliates in Duluth. However, by this time, the truth about Husky Friends had been exposed. The news correctly reported that it was actually just an elaborate satire — concocted by my activist group, Modest Proposals, in collaboration with local residents in an attempt to draw attention to the danger of the Superior Refinery.

The day before our hoax was exposed, thousands of postcards were distributed to residents living close to the refinery. They advertised Husky Friends and directed them to a website where anyone in the “friend zone” could sign up to receive a text warning 15 minutes after any HF release (while noting the real danger was within 10 minutes of a leak). The website also described a “neighbor compassion kit” featuring a burn cream for a chemical that can more-or-less kill on contact and a “Kid’s Room Gas Detector” that would play nursery rhymes if it detected HF.

We announced Husky Friends in a press release the following day, the anniversary of the explosion, and stayed in character until inevitably being exposed. Local TV stations, Wisconsin Public Radio, and numerous smaller newspapers all ran stories. We then capitalized further by sending repeated rounds of postcards on subsequent days which finally goaded Cenovus into circulating their own mailer to Superior residents denouncing our “inappropriate tactics” and reassuring them that the refinery was safe — essentially re-broadcasting our message for us.

“Gibraltar Explosion” by Josh13770 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

A wider problem and opportunity

Husky Friends was a locally-targeted action that re-animated a pressing issue long since faded from local headlines — thereby giving residents against the re-opening an opportunity to take advantage of its publicity. Not every city needs a dog mascot to talk to their mayor, but dedicating resources to local organizing efforts aimed at closing down oil refineries is something the climate movement should prioritize. There are huge opportunities to address the poisonous injustice of refineries’ sacrifice zones, and to strike a critical blow against the oil industry in the midst of the climate emergency.

Husky Friends may have used humor, but its message about the danger refineries pose was deadly serious — and by no means exclusive to Superior and Duluth. Approximately a third of refineries in the United States currently use hydrogen fluoride, many of them near population centers. Several have even had near-miss accidents in the past few years. Refineries also spew carcinogens, neurotoxins and hazardous metals onto surrounding communities, leading to a litany of health problems, including cancer, chronic respiratory illness and birth defects. All this pollution creates sacrifice zones, with people living around them frequently being low income, BIPOC communities — many of whom lack the resources to move. The danger refineries pose has been exacerbated in recent years, as many of them are aging facilities with decaying equipment in dire need of expensive repairs that can take years. More accidents are “just a matter of time,” according to the U.S. chemical safety board.

Despite its urgent need, funding has been hard for the refining industry to come by since many investors don’t see a long-term market for fossil fuels. According to energy economist Ed Hirs  from the University of Houston, “Just getting the equipment you need could take three years. Electric vehicles might already make up 20 percent of the car market by then. You could find yourself investing a bunch of cash to rebuild a refinery that may not be needed for long.” Investor hesitancy naturally translates into a lack of funding for building any new refineries. There has not been a new refinery with significant capacity built since 1977, and even the CEO of Chevron has stated that “I don’t think you are ever going to see a refinery built again in this country.”

In the midst of the climate emergency, we need to look for the most effective use of movement resources to end fossil fuels as quickly as possible. The wariness of investors to finance  necessary repairs make refineries a critical strategic vulnerability. Every refinery closed will likely never reopen. Every refinery closed can be an end to part of the vast fossil fuel apparatus destroying our planet.

How we get there 

Any successful campaign needs to be specific about how it achieves its goals. A mentor of mine has a useful metaphor to break down campaigning specifics: If a campaign is a war, it needs an air war, and a ground war. Air war is about seizing or changing the narrative — much like Husky Friends did. Ground war is building power through relational organizing and grassroots base building. Air war creates the initiative and the ground war utilizes it to build organizations capable of wielding power. Successful campaigning needs both.

The air war gets waged using society’s means of information distribution, and its mediums are the tools of any political campaign: postcards, lawn signs, PR and perhaps most importantly advertising. The fossil fuel industry understands the impact of these tools and uses these tactics to garner local support. Enbridge Energy ran a plethora of ads in local newspapers for years to shape the narrative toward supporting its Line 3 oil sands pipeline in Northern Minnesota. Looking at these ads, you’d think that the pipeline had the support of local Indigenous tribes and was a boon for local jobs and the economy — when in fact many tribes fiercely resisted the pipeline, most of the workers came from out of state, and the pipeline brought an influx of harassment, violence and sex trafficking.

Environmental groups who opposed the pipeline had trouble getting enough resources to counter with their own message, which had the result of allowing Enbridge to monopolize critical channels of information distribution and opportunities to shape public perception. Even in heavily Trump-supporting Northern Minnesota such messaging could have had an effect. Citizens of Park Rapids cared enough about their water to take their city council to task over selling Enbridge water for Line 3 construction in the middle of 2021’s historic drought. If information about the threat that Line 3 poses to their water, and Enbridge’s abysmal safety record was more widely disseminated, it’s not hard to imagine more local residents joining the struggle.

None of this, however, is to fault the Indigenous leadership and brave frontline activists who fought Line 3. Instead, it’s a call to consider what they might have accomplished if they had more resources at their disposal to use the same local channels of information distribution that their opponents effectively weaponized against them.

Building power 

As anyone who has been part of a volunteer based organization can tell you, there is always too much to do, never enough time and never enough people to do it. That’s why we need to find a way to send help in the form of others who can devote their time and labor to these groups.

Such help could take shape in a variety of ways, depending on the status of local efforts. If local organizations are already well developed, sending people to do canvassing, phone calls and the endless clerical minutiae involved in advocacy can free up critical time resources for frontline activists. If they need more of a boost, experienced organizers can be sent in as well to advise and facilitate residents actualizing power with grassroots base building, identifying and developing leaders, and all the nuts and bolts of community organizing.

Organizing and directing community power is a skill — and like all skills, experience is the best teacher. Frontline communities should be able to benefit from and utilize the knowledge accumulated by other successful frontline organizers and activists. People living in sacrifice zones deserve a livable environment and deserve assistance in building the power necessary to create that livable environment.

However, when sending personnel to frontline communities, organizers must always understand that they are a facilitator for collective needs — not a leader — and therefore act accordingly. The climate movement has been historically staffed by people with privilege, but by dedicating financing and personnel to disadvantaged communities, they can bring more voices, especially the voices of people oppressed by the fossil fuel industry, into the larger struggle.

Editor’s note: “The 2025 Queensland floods refer to significant flooding that impacted the northeast Australian state of Queensland in late January, early February, into March and April 2025. The disaster resulted in at least two fatalities from flooding, 31 fatalities from a disease outbreak and prompted mass evacuation orders in Queensland’s coastal regions.”

By Kristine Sabillo / Mongabay

Intense flooding submerged usually dry areas of Queensland state in eastern Australia during the last week of March, forcing many people to evacuate and leave their livestock behind.

David Crisafulli, the Queensland premier, called the floods “unprecedented” as several places in western Queensland recorded the worst floods in the last 50 years, CNN reported. Some of the affected areas are normally very dry, including the Munga-Thirri-Simpson Desert, a vast arid region known for its sand dunes.

The rains started on March 23 as an inland low pressure area pulled monsoon rain from the tropical north of Australia into the arid landscape of southern Queensland, The Guardian reported. Cyclone Dianne, which reached Queensland from the west a few days later, further intensified the rains.

With rainfall reaching 600 millimeters (24 inches) over the last week of March, almost double the yearly average of some towns, record-breaking flood levels were reported in central Queensland’s Stonehenge, Jundah and Windorah areas. ABC news called it “the biggest flood in living memory for many people across outback Queensland,” exceeding the infamous 1974 flooding in the region.

In many towns, people were rescued using helicopters.

“We flew over a lot of water. We were just amazed how much water is around our place where we have never seen water before,” resident Ann-Maree Lloyd, evacuated by air from their home in the town of Yaraka, told ABC.

The agriculture industry is also facing significant losses. Crisafulli said more than 140,000 livestock, including cattle, sheep, goats and horses, were reported missing or dead, The Guardian reported on April 2. “This number will continue to rise,” he added. Images online show animals stuck in floods or mud.

Crisafulli said recovery may take years. For the agricultural industry, it means rebuilding some 4,700 kilometers (2,900 miles) of private roads and 3,500 km (2,200 mi) of fencing.

“Not only economically, but psychosocially — we’re already getting reports of landholders that are struggling mentally with the prospect of what they know is to come,” Tony Rayner, mayor of the affected Longreach region, told The Guardian.

Environmental geography professor Steve Turton wrote in The Conversation that some meteorologists have dubbed the recent rains a pseudo-monsoon, “because the normal Australian monsoon doesn’t reach this far south — the torrential rains of the monsoonal wet season tend to fall closer to the northern coasts.”

He added most of the rainwater dumped in the dry areas will now flow slowly through channels on the ground until it fills up Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre, usually a massive, salty, dry depression in the northern region of South Australia state, covering an area of more than 9,000 km2 (3,500 mi2).

“When Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre fills, it creates an extraordinary spectacle,” Turton wrote. Millions of brine shrimp hatch from eggs in the waters, which draw fish carried in the floodwaters, which in turn attract many waterbirds, he added.

Photo by Tobias Keller on Unsplash

Editor’s note: “What if you could save the climate while continuing to pollute it?” If that sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. But corporations across the globe are increasingly trying to answer this question with the same shady financial tool: carbon offsets.

To understand what’s going on with the carbon market, it’s important to know the terms(term-oil), vocabulary and organizations involved. For starters, a carbon credit is different from a carbon offset. A carbon credit represents a metric ton of carbon dioxide or the equivalent of other climate-warming gases kept out of the atmosphere. If a company (or individual, or country) uses that credit to compensate for its emissions — perhaps on the way to a claim of reduced net emissions — it becomes an offset.

“We need to pay countries to protect their forests, and that’s just not happening,” Mulder said. But the problem with carbon credits is they are likely to be used as offsets “to enable or justify ongoing emissions,” she said. “The best-case scenario is still not very good. And the worst-case scenario is pretty catastrophic, because we’re just locking in business as usual.”

“Offsetting via carbon credits is another way to balance the carbon checkbook. The idea first took hold in the 1980s and picked up in the following decade. Industrialized countries that ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol became part of a mandatory compliance market, in which a cap-and-trade system limited the quantity of greenhouse gases those countries could emit. An industrialized country emitting over its cap could purchase credits from another industrialized country that emitted less than its quota. Emitters could also offset CO₂ by investing in projects that reduced emissions in developing countries, which were not required to have targets.”

Yet, the truth is far darker. Far from being an effective tool, carbon credits have become a convenient smokescreen that allows polluters to continue their damaging practices unchecked. As a result, they’re hastening our descent into environmental and societal breakdown.

The entire framework of carbon credits is based on a single, fatal assumption: that “offsets” can substitute for actual emissions reductions. But instead of cutting emissions, companies and countries are using carbon credits as a cheap alternative to meaningful action. This lack of accountability is pushing us closer to catastrophic climate tipping points, with the far-reaching impacts of climate change and resource depletion threatening the lives of everyone on this planet.

Brazilian prosecutors are calling for the cancellation of the largest carbon credit deal in the Amazon Rainforest, saying it breaks national law and risks harming Indigenous communities.

While marketed as a solution to mitigate climate change, carbon markets have been criticized as a facade for continued extractivism and corporate control of minerals in Africa.

Africa’s vast forests, minerals, and land are increasingly commodified under the guise of carbon offset projects. Global corporations invest in these projects, claiming to “offset” their emissions while continuing business as usual in their countries. This arrangement does little to address emissions at the source and increase exploitation in Africa, where land grabs, displacement, and ecological degradation often accompany carbon offset schemes.

“But beginning in January 2023, The Guardian, together with other news organizations, have published a series of articles that contend the majority of carbon credit sales in their analysis did not lead to the reduction of carbon in the atmosphere. The questions have centered on concepts such as additionality, which refers to whether a credit represents carbon savings over and above what would have happened without the underlying effort, and other methods used to calculate climate benefits.

The series also presented evidence that a Verra-approved conservation project in Peru promoted as a success story for the deforestation it helped to halt resulted in the displacement of local landowners. Corporations like Chevron, the second-largest fossil fuel company in the U.S., purchase carbon credits to bolster their claims of carbon neutrality. But an analysis by the watchdog group Corporate Accountability found that these credits were backed by questionable carbon capture technologies and that Chevron is ignoring the emissions that will result from the burning of the fossil fuels it produces.”

Since 2009, Tesla has had a tidy little side hustle selling the regulatory credits it collects for shifting relatively huge numbers of EVs in markets like China, Europe and California. The company earns the credits selling EVs and then sells them to automakers whose current lineup exceeds emission rules set out in certain territories. This business has proven quite lucrative for Tesla, as Automotive News explains:

The Elon Musk-led manufacturer generated $1.79 billion in regulatory credit revenue last year, an annual filing showed last week. That brought the cumulative total Tesla has raked in since 2009 to almost $9 billion.

“Tesla shouldn’t be considered a car manufacturer: they’re a climate movement profiteer. Most of their profits come from carbon trading. Car companies would run afoul of government regulations and fines for producing high emissions vehicles, but thanks to carbon credits, they can just pay money to companies like Tesla to continue churning out gas guzzlers. In other words, according to Elon Musk’s business model: no gas guzzlers, no Tesla.” – Peter Gelderloos

A LICENSE TO POLLUTE

The carbon offset market is an integral part of efforts to prevent effective climate action

As a private university expands its footprint and threatens the amphibian’s habitat, residents are voicing their opposition and searching for another way forward.

By Lee Hedgepeth

April 10, 2025

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

HOMEWOOD, Ala.—Ellen McLaughlin said she wasn’t speaking for herself.

“I speak for the salamanders,” she told those gathered at a community meeting in late March.

McLaughlin, a retired Samford University biology professor, was one of dozens who showed up at the Homewood Senior Center to express their frustration over a proposed “town square” development that will threaten the habitat of spotted salamanders in the Birmingham suburb.

Flanked by oil paintings of wildflower fields and a waterfall, she made her views well known.

“They require a certain habitat, and to destroy that habitat is going to destroy that population of salamanders,” she told those in attendance, including representatives of Landmark Development, the company overseeing the project on behalf of the university. “So it’s imperative that we keep that.”

McLaughlin wasn’t alone in her concerns. Again and again, residents and other stakeholders present at the community meeting hosted by the development company brought up the plight of the amphibian that has, over time, become part of the character of Homewood, home of a salamander festival held annually for two decades.

Bob Dunn, CEO of Landmark Development, said in an interview that he understands residents’ concerns but that he can’t promise that there will be no impact to the spotted salamanders and the vernal pools where they lay their eggs each year.

“Could we encroach on portions of the habitat? As you look at the plan, there are areas where there’s some encroachment,” he said. “But we think the mitigating opportunities will more than compensate for the type of encroachment we’re talking about.”

Residents, biologists and members of the university community interviewed by Inside Climate News largely disagree. Currently proposed plans don’t leave room for changes that would protect the salamanders’ current habitat, they argue, putting at risk the survival of a population that’s called the city home for generations.

A Salamander’s Tale

The spotted salamander has long been a unique part of Homewood’s history.

Since at least the 1960s, and likely much longer, experts say, the amphibians have spent much of their time burrowing on the slopes of Shades Mountain, making their homes beneath the fallen leaves and limbs of the forest.

Once a year, as temperatures in Alabama begin to climb, the amphibians migrate from the mountain’s slopes across South Lakeshore Drive, a two-lane road, to the springtime, “vernal” pools located in a narrow patch of woods adjacent to existing sports fields that line Shades Creek.

The trek is not always simple. Most often, the salamanders embark on their journey at night, and typically in heavy rains—likely as a way to keep wet and avoid predators.

James Seay Brown Jr., a retired folklorist and natural historian who worked at Samford, wrote about Homewood’s relationship with the spotted salamander in his book, “Distracted by Alabama: Tangled Threads of Natural History, Local History and Folklore.”

When Brown arrived at Samford in 1971, the university’s environmental community was already tracking the salamanders and their annual migration. Brown quickly became obsessed with their yearly trek, and the fixation rubbed off on others over time.

Soon, Brown recruited his wife Michelle to serve as a sort of salamander Paul Revere—tasked with calling a list of interested locals when her husband had confirmed that the amphibians were on the move.

In 2002, Brown awoke to a heavy rain around three in the morning, traveled down to the migration site and confirmed the annual journey had begun. He alerted Michelle, who he said became nervous about calling one person in particular on the list—a Samford executive—so late at night. The executive’s wife answered, surprised by a woman’s voice on the other end of the line, but awkwardly agreed to share the news with her husband. The executive soon showed up for the crossing. So did his wife.

“And here were highly placed administrators of [University of Alabama at Birmingham] and Samford, plus otherwise upstanding businesspeople, professionals, and good family folks, all willing to risk their reputations by such behavior—though I might note some brought children as an excuse,” Brown wrote. “My wife later remarked drily that the ranks of insanity were growing. This may also have been the reaction of Homewood’s mayor at that time, Barry McCulley, when he first heard about it from some police report about flashlights in the woods near the high school at eleven o’clock at night and suspicious answers to straightforward police questions.”

By 2003, the excitement and intrigue over the annual salamander crossing had reached its peak, and city officials in April of that year officially designated a nearly half-mile stretch of South Lakeshore Drive as a salamander crossing—painted crosswalks and street signs included.

By the next year, the city hosted the first Salamander Festival, a tradition that’s continued to this day. In 2024, more than 900 attendees flocked to Homewood for the event, according to organizers.

In 2008, the city of Homewood took another step that aided the salamander—designating around 65 acres of land along South Lakeshore Drive, opposite the breeding pools, as a protected natural area: Homewood Nature Preserve.

Now, though, residents of Homewood fear the worst—that the desire for development will outweigh the need for environmental stewardship of the amphibians’ habitat. That’s why residents like Ellen McLaughlin say they will speak for the salamander.

A Creekside Development

March’s community meeting at the Homewood Senior Center was partly a result of the city’s planning commission encouraging Landmark Development to more deeply engage with citizens over their concerns, according to city officials.

The development, called Creekside, is billed by the developer as a “dynamic, walkable, livable town square environment” that will feature everything from “trendy shops to delightful eateries.”

The project is part of Samford University’s “Samford Horizons” initiative, which the university touts as “a visionary master plan to ensure Samford remains among the world’s most respected Christ-centered universities.”

Samford, founded by the Alabama Baptist State Convention in 1841 as Howard College, has increased enrollment for the past 16 years in a row. University officials have said the proposed Creekside development will help to accommodate that growth, providing additional housing, retail options and sport facilities.

At the March meeting, members of the public were vocal about their opposition to the project. No one expressed support for the developer’s proposal.

Of particular concern to residents is a proposed 10-story hotel—which would be the tallest building in the city—and the implications for traffic, stormwater management and environmental stewardship as it relates to the spotted salamander.

Historically, the university has often found itself in tension with city officials and residents over development. Echoes of that tension surfaced in the community meeting.

“Samford wants to do this to us,” Becky Smith, a Homewood resident, said in a deep Southern drawl. “We don’t want you coming down here to tell us what you’re going to do to us.”

The framing of the new development as providing a new “town square” for Homewood belies Samford’s claims that it wants to develop a closer relationship with the city, she argued.

“Samford has said they want to be more a part of Homewood,” Smith said. “This is trying to make Homewood more a part of Samford.”

After those comments, Colin Coyne, Samford’s vice president for finance, business affairs and strategy, spoke up, telling community members that the university’s past friction with the community that surrounds it is not lost on him.

“I acknowledge the fact that we’ve not always been the best neighbors,” Coyne said. “But we have to start somewhere. This is our best attempt.”

Dunn, who spoke on behalf of Landmark at the meeting, said that the developer would do its best to mitigate the impact of the Creekside project on the spotted salamander’s springtime habitat. Landmark would certainly not be able to guarantee, however, that its engineering fixes would solve every problem, he said.

“It’s about really elevating issues that we have to stay focused on to continue to work to find good solutions that balance out all of the issues that go into a development,” he said. “We solve over here for the salamanders, and it creates an issue somewhere else. You’ve just got to find a balance.”

A Threat to the Salamander

The day after the meeting, Megan Gibbons put on her boots and waded into a place she feels at home, and where the salamanders do, too: the vernal pools just north of South Lakeshore Drive. There, she carefully reached into the water again and again, searching for the salamander egg masses she’s fighting to protect.

It’s here, in the shadow of Shades Mountain, near the shores of Shades Creek, where Gibbons, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has done some of her best teaching. It’s here, in the stagnant springtime pools, shaded by the trees overhead, where she’s sparked the passions of students from across the country. And it’s not just for their benefit that she wants these salamanders to survive. It’s for the next generation of salamanders, too.

It doesn’t take Gibbons long to find an egg mass. She smiles as she holds out the jelly-like blob that can contain between 10 and 100 eggs. Through the translucent membranes, you can see the tiny salamanders beginning to take shape— amphibians that will soon hatch and make their first journey over to the slopes of Shades Mountain.

“This one’s pretty far along,” she says of the egg mass, pointing out the various points of interest. “You can see its little body, and you can see its little fluffy gills coming out the side of its head.”

In this environment, Gibbons is doing what she loves best—teaching. It had been the same the evening before, when Gibbons—not then in her wading boots—had stood studiously along one wall of the meeting room, an educational poster about the salamander habitat at her side. One by one, she spoke to residents who approached her, explaining the risks posed by the impending development.

A day later, as she stood holding the egg mass, she weighed again what was at risk. It’s about balance, Dunn had said at the meeting. Balance in favor of what, Gibbons wondered.

“They’re going to make a lot of money from this,” Gibbons said of the developer. “What do we get out of this? What do the salamanders get out of this? I get to see the animal I love destroyed. That’s what I get.”

Soon, Gibbons had carefully replaced the egg mass into the vernal pool and climbed back to the adjacent roadway. A passerby, a retiree named Barbara Koehler, stopped to ask if Gibbons was looking for salamanders. She’d been at the meeting with the developer, too, she said, and didn’t like much of what she heard.

“I think the guy from Landmark was smooth,” she said. “He was good at glossing over the issue. He knows exactly what he should say to get people to think he’s not going to do exactly what he knows he’s going to do.”

“What do we get out of this? What do the salamanders get out of this? I get to see the animal I love destroyed. That’s what I get.”

— Megan Gibbons, University of Alabama at Birmingham biologist

Throughout the meeting, Dunn had emphasized that direct community engagement was not technically a required part of development in Homewood, Koehler recalled. Any construction could move forward simply with the necessary approvals from the Homewood City Council. Engagement would be ideal, Dunn said, but was not a mandate. To Koehler and Gibbons, that felt like a threat—an insinuation that meaningful community engagement could stop at any time if it suited the developer.

Koehler, a self-described birder and naturalist, said she’s opposed to the development.

“It’s just not a good idea,” she said. Her gaze soon pointed to the skyline, darting from tree to tree as birds chirped eagerly in the daylight sun. “This is worth protecting.”

Finding a Way Forward

What Dunn said about a lack of required input from residents is largely true.

On April 1, Dunn attended a meeting of the planning commission, a body required to recommend either approval or denial of the development plan by the Homewood City Council. Only Dunn—no residents or other stakeholders—was allowed to speak, according to a Homewood recording of the session. The CEO characterized the feedback he’d received from residents as “overwhelmingly positive.”

During the presentation, however, Dunn announced the publication of a report containing potential adjustments to the original development plan based on comments from residents. Ninety-two percent of written comments were about environmental stewardship, according to the developer’s own numbers.

The adjustments in the updated document include potential consideration of a “repositioning” of proposed sports fields that were slated to cover nearly the entire area from Shades Creek to South Lakeshore Drive, though representatives at the March meeting had noted that reducing the fields’ size wouldn’t be feasible given NCAA requirements for field dimensions. Plans for at least two salamander tunnels under South Lakeshore are also outlined in the updated plan—a potential pathway for the amphibians to cross the road without the risk of crossing traffic above ground.

Gibbons said in an interview that she’s not convinced that such slight adjustments will protect a species that has continually been left behind by commercial and residential development, not just in Homewood, but across the state and country. The risk of harming the species outweighs what’s to be gained by more and more development, she said.

Winslow Armstead, a member of the planning commission, pushed Dunn on providing more complete responses to residents’ questions and concerns, particularly when construction on the project could begin as early as this fall.

“I’m still sort of at a loss for the answers on some of those questions,” he told Dunn.

But ultimately, the planning commission recommended approval of the developer’s plan. It is set to be considered by the Homewood City Council in the coming weeks.

Continued engagement with Landmark Development is the best option for influencing what happens beside Shades Creek and Shades Mountain, particularly in today’s political climate, said David Butler, executive director of Cahaba Riverkeeper.

“There’s been a lot of hope that some federal or state agency would come in to help, but all of our environmental protections have been eroded,” he said. “All of the regulatory frameworks we’ve relied on have been broken down, and so we’re really going to have to go through and do a lot of that protection work on our own.”

That work, Butler said, can include direct discussions with developers—emphasizing to those proposing new growth that environmental stewardship must be a firm commitment from the beginning.

When it comes to Landmark and the Homewood project, Butler said he’s optimistic. Landmark reached out to Cahaba Riverkeeper, an environmental nonprofit, even before the first planning meeting, he said.

“I’m encouraged,” Butler said. “We would prefer no development, but that’s not a realistic position to take here. Development is going to happen. But at least we’re at the table. At least we have input.”

https://ping.insideclimatenews.org/js/ping.js?v=0.0.1

D. Gordon E. Robertson, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spotted_Salamander,_Cantley,_Quebec.jpg