Frustrations rise along with water rates

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. ( WIAT ) – Over a dozen concerned Birmingham Water Works customers came out to a town hall Wednesday night to get answers from the board on the proposed water rate increase.

The town hall was hosted by Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson, who says forums like these need to be held 4 to 5 times a year.

Many people were looking for understanding and clarification. Last Monday, the BWWB held a public hearing on the rate increase but people could only speak for three minutes and questions could not be answered by the board at that time so the town hall aimed to remedy that.

"I talked to the citizens [Wednesday night] and they said that they didn't like the answers, but they got the correct answers," Tyson said. "That's all they wanted."

One of the biggest questions on many BWW customers' minds is this:

"When will this end?" a customer in attendance asked. "Because it keeps going on and it appears to us that somebody has figured out a way to put this burden on the people so that we can take care of all of this."

Annual increases will continue for the next three decades. Tyson says a forty year deal is in place that raises the water rates each year.

"This is a life sentence for us. There's nothing we can do," Oxmoor resident Gary Lavender said. "The county has got out of bankruptcy but the bankruptcy part has been dropped on the citizens of Jefferson County."

The BWWB says the rate increase in 2025 would raise the average customer's bill by $2.14.

"When you raise the height, it may seem minimal, but the working poor are struggling to survive," one woman in the town hall said.

The BWWB says the money from the rate increase would go towards many different things to include operation costs for equipment, chemicals and labor, pipeline replacement projects to better water flow, Lake Purdy dam and water tank rehabilitation and technology upgrades.

"It's expensive to produce water, and very large water system, and the way we treat our water, the cost of that is such that it's going to be an increase," BWWB interim general manager Darryl Jones said.

The BWWB is scheduled to vote on the budget and proposed rate increase Novemeber 20.

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"We used to hate elephants a lot," Kenyan farmer Charity Mwangome says, pausing from her work under the shade of a baobab tree.The bees humming in the background are part of the reason why her hatred has dimmed.The diminutive 58-year-old said rapacious elephants would often destroy months of work in her farmland that sits between two parts of Kenya's world-renowned Tsavo National Park.Beloved by tourists - who contribute around 10 percent of Kenya's GDP - the animals are loathed by most local farmers, who form the backbone of the nation's economy.Elephant conservation has been a roaring success: numbers in Tsavo rose from around 6,000 in the mid-1990s to almost 15,000 elephants in 2021, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).But the human population also expanded, encroaching on grazing and migration routes for the herds.Resulting clashes are becoming the number one cause of elephant deaths, says KWS.Refused compensation when she lost her crops, Mwangome admits she was mad with the conservationists. But a long-running project by charity Save the Elephants offered her an unlikely solution - deterring some of nature's biggest animals with some of its smallest: African honeybees.Cheery yellow beehive fences now protect several local plots, including Mwangome's. A nine-year study published last month found that elephants avoided farms with the ferocious bees 86 percent of the time."The beehive fences came to our rescue," said Mwangome.- Hacking nature -The deep humming of 70,000 bees is enough to make many flee, including a six-tonne elephant, but Loise Kawira calmly removes a tray in her apiary to demonstrate the intricate combs of wax and honey.Kawira, who joined Save the Elephants in 2021 as their consultant beekeeper, trains and monitors farmers in the delicate art.The project supports 49 farmers, whose plots are surrounded by 15 connected hives. Each is strung on greased wire a few metres off the ground, which protects them from badgers and insects, but also means they shake when disturbed by a hungry elephant. "Once the elephants hear the sound of the bees and the smell, they run away," Kawira told AFP."It hacks the interaction between elephants and bees," added Ewan Brennan, local project coordinator. It has been effective, but recent droughts, exacerbated by climate change, have raised challenges."(In) the total heat, the dryness, bees have absconded," said Kawira.It is also expensive - about 150,000 Kenyan shillings ($1,100) to install hives - well beyond the means of subsistence farmers, though the project organisers say it is still cheaper than electric fences.- 'I was going to die' -Just moments after AFP arrived at Mwanajuma Kibula's farm, which abuts one of the Tsavo parks, her beehive fence had seen off an elephant.The five-tonne animal, its skin caked in red mud, rumbled into the area and then did an abrupt about-face. "I know my crops are protected," Kibula said with palpable relief.Kibula, 48, also harvests honey twice a year from her hives, making 450 shillings per jar - enough to pay school fees for her children.She is fortunate to have protection from the biggest land mammals on Earth."An elephant ripped off my roof, I had to hide under the bed because I knew I was going to die," said a less-fortunate neighbour, Hendrita Mwalada, 67.For those who can't afford bees, Save the Elephants offers other solutions, such as metal-sheet fences that clatter when shaken by approaching elephants, and diesel- or chilli-soaked rags that deter them. It is not always enough. "I have tried planting but every time the crops are ready, the elephants come and destroy the crops," Mwalada told AFP."That has been the story of my life, a life full of too much struggling."ra-rbu/er/kjm

STORY: Shell has won an appeal against a landmark climate order for it to cut greenhouse gas emissions.The appeals court in The Hague dismissed the 2021 ruling that Shell must cut its absolute carbon emissions by 45% by 2030, relative to 2019 levels.That included emissions caused by the use of its products.The case had been brought Friends of the Earth Netherlands, known as Milieudefensie.But presiding judge Carla Joustra said Shell was already on its way to meet required targets for its own emissions."Shell has set a specific reduction target for scope 1 and 2 that means its scope 1 and 2 emissions will be reduced by 50% by 2030 compared to 2016. Furthermore, it follows from the documents provided by Shell that it had already achieved a 31% reduction by 2023. So Shell is already doing what Milieudefensie is claiming from it. Milieudefensie's claim regarding scope 1 and 2 is therefore not admissible."The Dutch court did say, however, that the oil giant has a responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to protect people from global warming.It said Shell was already on its way to meet required targets for its own emissions.And it said that it was unclear if demands to reduce emissions caused by the use of its products would help the fight against climate change.The ruling coincides with the COP29 U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.On the agenda is a continuation of last year's talks about transitioning away from fossil fuels. Shell Chief Executive Officer Wael Sawan welcomed the decision, saying Shell believed it was "the right one for the global energy transition, the Netherlands and our company."Milieudefensie said it was disappointed about Shell's victory and would continue its fight against large polluters."This really touches me. This should have been the moment of a real breakthrough in the fight against dangerous climate change. That didn't happen today, but the fight against dangerous climate change is a marathon, not a sprint, and the race has only just begun."