SALEM, Ore. – Salem residents are facing a crisis as the second drinking water advisory in two weeks went into effect this week due to a toxic algae bloom in Detroit Lake. Could climate change make emergencies like this more frequent for Oregonians?

Algae blooms like the one in Detroit Lake are fed by warmer temperatures – something the country already is experiencing. Kathie Dello, associate director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, notes May was the hottest on record in the United States, surpassing a 1934 Dust Bowl record.

She says Oregon has been feeling the effects in recent years too.

"If we think back to 2015, which was one of our worst droughts on record,” says Dello, “some of the streams were so low that they got quite warm, and not only did we have fish kills, but we also saw things like algae blooms."

Last week Gov. Kate Brown activated the National Guard to distribute safe drinking water to Salem residents. The latest advisory is more limited in scope, applying to vulnerable populations such as children under six, pregnant women, and people with compromised immune systems.

Algae blooms have become a growing problem for cities' drinking water supplies across the country. But Dello says it's not just water quality that is suffering under climate change.

Oregon has seen decreased snowpacks and more severe droughts and wildfires. She says the first step to mitigating these effects is reducing carbon emissions – which Oregon has committed itself to doing.

"Also, we have to look at adaptation,” says Dello. “Climate change is happening, it's already impacting Oregonians, so we need to prepare for a rapidly changing future."

Dello says the growing effects of climate change have public health impacts, which will become costly for cities to address. In the case of drinking water, she says it could be low-income families who suffer most when they can no longer rely on their tap water and have to turn to some other, more expensive source.


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The "Make Polluters Pay Superfund" bill goes before the California Assembly Natural Resources Committee Monday.

The bill would direct the California Environmental Protection Agency to study how much climate change has cost the state between 1990 and 2024, and assess a one-time fee on oil and gas companies emitting more than 1 billion metric tons of emissions.

Maya Golden-Krasner, deputy director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity in Los Angeles, explained the goal of the bill.

"These are companies that make billions of dollars in profits per day," Golden-Krasner pointed out. "This bill would take some of the burden off of taxpayers, and put it onto the people who caused the crisis."

Right now, taxpayers end up footing much of the bill to clean up after natural disasters like mega-fires and floods, made worse by climate change. The money would go into a fund for climate-related programs, including projects to promote energy efficiency, make infrastructure more resilient, create urban green spaces and restore wetlands. The Western States Petroleum Association is among opponents of the bill, saying it will raise fuel costs for consumers and businesses.

The State Building and Construction Trades Council also opposes the bill, saying it will cost jobs.

Asm. Dawn Addis, D-Morro Bay, a sponsor of the bill, argued the climate projects will create jobs and a one-time fee should not affect gas prices.

"These companies lied to the public for decades," Addis contended. "They knew that the pollution they were causing was creating climate damage, was leading to global warming. They hid that information, and it's time for them to be part of the solution."

The bill has already passed the Senate Environmental Quality Committee in March and goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday.


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Warmer winters and prolonged drought have turned Colorado forests into a budworm and beetle buffet, according to a new report from Colorado State University, and the thousands of acres of dead and dying trees left in their wake pose wildfire risks.

Dan West, entomologist for the Colorado State Forest Service, said four of the last five years have seen below-average precipitation, which is a problem because trees need water to produce resin, which they use to fight off insects.

"When we have significantly below or below-average precipitation, you couple that with warmer than average temperatures, it's really hard to be a tree in Colorado," West explained. "A lot of these bark beetles are just taking advantage of that."

Between 2023 and 2024, western spruce budworms increased their feasting grounds to 217,000 acres, up 15,000 acres from the previous year. The mountain pine beetle population continues to grow along the Front Range, in Gunnison County and in the southwest corner of the state. Bark beetles, the state's deadliest because they kill entire trees, have devoured 27,000 acres in places such as Rocky Mountain National Park and the San Juan and San Isabel national forests.

Warmer winters due to the burning of fossil fuels have taken away a key tree defense: deep freezes. West noted Colorado has not seen below-average winter temperatures in more than three decades.

"Maybe in my parents' generation or grandparents' generation, we used to calculate in overwinter mortality of bark beetles," West pointed out. "We pretty much don't do that anymore. The temperatures really never reach that overwintering cold temperature that can cause bark beetle mortality."

West added trees and insects naturally coexist in ecosystems and bark beetles act as sanitizers of the forest by recycling nutrients but with entire forests weakened, trees become low-hanging fruit.

"As these outbreaks continue over a number of years, we've got a lot of standing dead trees," West observed. "A cigarette, a campfire, a lightning strike -- whatever the spark may be -- that then has a lot of fuel to be able to burn through."

The Comanche 3 coal-fired power plant in Pueblo, Colo., is set to close in just six years -- and community leaders, regulators, and Xcel are considering plans to replace the unit's energy and economic contributions.

A new Energy Innovation report suggests that an industrial-scale energy park that harnesses wind, solar, and battery storage would check all the boxes.

Michelle Solomon, electricity policy manager with the nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation, said the energy park would create some 300 permanent, high-paying jobs in plant operations, engineering, and more.

"The energy park could generate up to $40 million in annual tax revenue for Pueblo," said Solomon, "which is really important because they depend on this tax revenue that they're getting from Comanche right now -- for things like schools and libraries, things that the community can't afford to lose."

Comanche's connection to the power grid would allow the energy park to meet rising demand locally and in places like Colorado Springs and Denver.

A separate proposal calls for replacing Comanche with a small modular nuclear reactor, an energy source that does not emit carbon but remains controversial.

Tribal lands have been repeatedly targeted as radioactive waste dumps, and many still remember nuclear disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

Wind and solar are now the cheapest source for electricity - and Solomon said unlike nuclear-reactor or natural-gas plant projects, ratepayers would share startup costs with onsite manufacturers, who get guaranteed low-cost energy to produce fertilizer, hydrogen, and more.

"That could be used at any type of industry that's using heat," said Solomon. "So, that could be a steel plant, a cement plant, anything that's using heat for manufacturing."

Solomon said speed is also important for getting economic benefits flowing back into the community. The energy park could break ground before 2030, years earlier than other options.

"They are also the types of resources that can come online more quickly," said Solomon. "When the coal plant retires, the community can't wait a decade for a new resource to come online."