A range of vegetation has moved into the former Kakhovka reservoir in Ukraine. Russian occupying forces destroyed the dam along the Dnieper River in June 2023.  Photos by Serhiiy Skoryk

Russia’s bombing of Kakhovka Dam in 2023 killed hundreds of people and tens of thousands of animals, but it also provided a potential ecological reset.

This story was originally published by The Revelator.

KYIV — In the early hours of June 6, 2023, two large explosions reverberated across cities and small towns located on the banks of the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine. The Russian military had reportedly set off multiple bombs, destroying the three-kilometer-long Kakhovka Dam and draining its massive reservoir into nearby settlements.

Water from the dam flooded the plains, killing hundreds of civilians and countless livestock, destroying farms, and displacing the residents of more than 37,000 homes.

The bombing made headlines around the world. It’s the long-term impact of the attack on the local biodiversity, however, that has scientists and experts concerned. In the weeks following the explosion, researchers from Ukrainian ministries and independent organizations carried out several assessments as best they could to the backdrop of the war.

They found that the attack had flooded about 60,000 hectares (230 square miles) of forest in at least four national parks, threatening an estimated population of 20,000 animals and 10,000 birds.

Serhiiy Skoryk, a national park director, is seen with landmines that are typical of those that have literally flooded the conflict zone during the Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine. These mines and other hazards complicate efforts to gauge the impact of the Russian invasion on Ukraine’s unique natural environment. 

In the early morning hours of Dec. 22, 2008, the earthen wall of a containment pond at Tennessee’s Kingston Fossil Plant gave way. The breach released 1.3 million cubic meters (1.7 cubic yards) of sludge, infiltrating a nearby river and damaging dozens of homes.  NASA Earth Observatory

Journalist’s book offers deep sweep of 2008 coal-ash disaster at TVA’s Kingston coal plant

CHATTANOOGA — Jared Sullivan’s book, Valley So Low, is “A courtroom drama about the victims of one of the largest environmental disasters in US history — and the country lawyer who challenged the notion that, in America, justice can be bought.” Those words from the publisher’s dust jacket sum up the story, but the pathos of workers, certain that they got sick on the job, and the lawyer’s struggle against a well-funded corporate defense, is in the details.

Most residents of the Tennessee Valley remember the 2008 disaster when a wall of a coal ash slurry rushed out of the Kingston Steam Plant, flooding the Emory River and inundating 300 acres of the surrounding countryside. 

Sullivan offered insight into the story to an audience in Chattanooga in October. When workers fell ill after the cleanup, local personal injury lawyer Jim Scott challenged Jacob’s Engineering, a private company the Tennessee Valley Authority contracted to manage the cleanup. Scott was the only lawyer willing to take their case, according to Sullivan. 

The Hiram Caldwell House looks out over a road rendered impassable following major flooding on Rough Fork Creek. Cataloochee Valley is closed until further notice.  National Park Service

Damage to park infrastructure widespread on North Carolina side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Holly Kays is the lead writer for Smokies Life. 

GATLINBURG — As Hurricane Helene gathered strength in the southern Gulf of Mexico, it seemed likely Great Smoky Mountains National Park would take a direct hit. The storm was a category 4 before slamming Florida’s Gulf Coast; then it headed north toward the Smokies.

But its course shifted east. Helene and its predecessor storm dropped unfathomable amounts of rain across Southern Appalachia — many places received well over a dozen inches in a matter of days, with some locations recording two dozen or more. The storm’s severity was unprecedented in the region, causing flash floods and landslides that have so far claimed at least 95 lives in North Carolina alone. Asheville, where extreme flooding destroyed entire neighborhoods and decimated the water system, logged more than 14 inches between September 24 and September 28.

Most of the park fell far enough west of Helene’s path to escape with only minor flooding, but its extreme eastern region — Cataloochee, Balsam Mountain, Big Creek — was inundated. Record-setting rains tore out trails and roads and damaged historic buildings, leading the park to close these areas until further notice.

Cataloochee Valley is closed until further notice after flooding from Rough Creek Fork rendered Upper Cataloochee Valley Road impassable.  National Park Service

The CSX rail line through the Nolichucky River Gorge near Erwin, Tennessee was one of many transportation and vital commerce links destroyed by epic river flooding spawned by Tropical Storm Helene Sept. 26-27, 2024.  Jonathan Mitchell for Hellbender Press

ORNL Climate Change Institute: Weirdly warm water that spawned and fed Hurricane Helene was 500 times more likely due to climate change

OAK RIDGE — Hellbender Press spoke with Oak Ridge National Laboratory Climate Change Science Institute Director Peter Thornton about whether Hurricane Helene and its subsequent and disastrous impact on the Southern Appalachians was made worse by climate change. Citing an increasing scientific ability to link climate change to specific weather events, he said in a very matter-of-fact manner that yes, Helene was fueled by the symptoms and consequences of global warming caused by human emissions of carbon and other pollutants.

Thornton cited a World Weather Attribution report as a main source for his data and commentary, and summarized its research on Helene for Hellbender Press. Here is the interview, edited for clarity and brevity:

“I am the director of the Climate Change ScienceInstitute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I am a corporate fellow researchstaff at the laboratory in the area of earth system modeling and coupled carbon-cycle climatefeedbacks at the global scale all the way down to local scales.” 

HP: The effects of Hurricane Helene were worsened by preceding rain events, correct?

“The event as it played out along the sort of the eastern flankof the Southern Appalachians was influenced strongly by precipitation that came beforethe storm even made landfall. There was what’s referred to as a stalled cold front, which was sitting over that SouthernAppalachian region and the front, kind of a linear element, stretched from Atlanta up along the flankof the Southern Appalachians.

“There were river stages that were already approaching record levels in some areasof that region before the storm arrived. There was probably moisture being pulled in from theouter bands of the storm into that stalled cold front, which was making that precipitation eventslightly bigger than it would have been otherwise. But it was an independentsynoptic-scale meteorological event.

(That could be linked to increased moisture, a hallmark of climate change, on the fringes of the tropical system, but there’s no data on that yet).

Peter Thornton, director of the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is shown here doing climate-research field work in 2015. ORNL

NCEI’s Physical Archive in Asheville, N.C. contains historical environmental data on paper and film. The Physical Archive remains safe and secure following Hurricane Helene and catastrophic flooding in the Southern Appalachians.  NOAA

Staff and data holdings safe; webpages, products and services in the process of coming back online

John Bateman is a public affairs officer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

ASHEVILLE — NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), headquartered in Asheville, is recovering from the impacts of Hurricane Helene. NCEI has confirmed that all of its employees and staff are safe, and is continuing to support them through the storm recovery. NCEI data holdings — including its paper and film records — are safe. 

NCEI’s broadband internet provider is now fully operational. In addition to the recently reestablished connectivity, NCEI is leveraging facilities and staff in Colorado, Mississippi and Maryland to bring some system and data “ingest” capabilities back into operation. NCEI has resumed the majority of its data ingest streams and can confirm that data are being securely archived. We expect all ingest data pathways to be fully operational in the next two weeks.

NCEI continues to work with data providers to recoup data that were not ingested while systems were down. This work will take up to three months to be completed. NCEI will recover as much data as possible, however, some observations might eventually be unrecoverable.