While I don’t ever buy new cars, I can still appreciate a great deal. But truly great deals are hard to come by, so when I hear about them, I’m always a bit skeptical. Most of the time, it ends up being some sort of scam or trick. So when a friend sent me a link to the inventory for a Buick-GMC dealership in Alabama that appears to show a bunch of brand-new, 2026 Sierra 1500 pickup trucks discounted by over $10,000, resulting in asking prices of around $30,000, I figured it was some kind of clerical error.

As it turns out, those massive discounts are real. Howard Bentley Buick GMC, a dealer in Albertville, Alabama, is currently offering some massive discounts on its Sierra 1500 inventory, allowing buyers to own a full-on half-ton truck for nearly the price of a base Ford Maverick.

It’s not just this one dealership where you can snag an absolutely killer deal right now on a 1500. GMC is offering a pretty gigantic discount in an attempt to move trucks equipped with General Motors’ “Turbomax” turbocharged inline four-cylinder engine, to prepare for deliveries of 2027 model-year trucks.

What Exactly Is Going On Here?

If you go to Howard Bentley Buick GMC’s website right now, you’ll see over two dozen GMC Sierra 1500 Pros advertised for under $27,000, with each listing mentioning somewhere between $13,000 and $14,000 of savings. Click on a listing, and it gives you a breakdown of the discounts:

That “Trade Assistance” discount can be ignored right away, as it only applies if you also trade in a qualified vehicle. That means if you just walked into the dealership with no trade-in, you wouldn’t get that extra $3,500. Add that back in, and you’re looking at a real price of $30,115. That’s still $10,500 in discounts, though, or roughly a fourth of the car’s original MSRP.

Curious to know where this $7,000 “Howard Bentley Discount” was coming from, I called the dealer to find out more. A representative told me that it, along with the Purchase Allowance and Bonus Cash discounts, was being used to clear inventory in anticipation of 2027 model-year vehicles. Howard Bentley is the top dealer in Alabama by volume, which is probably why it has so many base 1500s on the lot in the first place.

But discounts like this aren’t limited to this one dealer. While that $7,000 discount is advertised as a dealer-level markdown, it’s actually a nationwide incentive being offered by the factory. Specifically, it’s a $7,000 purchase allowance for any Sierra 1500 with a Turbomax engine. Lorenzo Buick GMC, a dealership in Miami, is advertising similar discounts on its website for these trucks, as is Classic Buick GMC of Cleburne, Texas.

Mashed with the lower-level discounts dealers normally give out to move inventory, it’s unlocking the opportunity to get into a proper half-ton truck for cheaper than any smaller mid-size truck on the market today, including GMC’s own Canyon.

What Does A $30,000 GMC Sierra 1500 Look Like?

The modularity of GMC’s Sierra pickup means there are countless trim combinations to choose from, from short-wheelbase, regular-cab, two-wheel drive base models to fully loaded, Supercrew bodied, chromed-out, leather-heavy, Denali Ultimates powered by 6.2-liter V8s.

Obviously, you’re not going to be getting anywhere near a Denali for 30 grand. The trucks priced in this range are the base Pro models with the regular, single-row cab and the standard-sized 6.6-foot bed. As mentioned previously, they use the 2.7-liter four-cylinder making 310 horsepower and 430 pound-feet of torque, paired to an eight-speed automatic sending power to the rear wheels only.

Don’t expect many creature comforts inside, either. Pro models get the basics you’d expect from any new car—air conditioning, cruise control, a backup camera, USB ports for charging—but not much else. Expect lots of blank buttons and other unused real estate. There’s an infotainment screen, but it’s fairly tiny. It comes with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, though, which is nice.

There are a few charming elements of a base, brand-new GM truck I’d actually prefer here, even if I were opting for a higher trim level. The column-mounted gear selector is a must, as are the silver-painted steel wheels. And what regular cab truck would be complete without a true three-seater bench? The Pro model gets this seating setup standard, with a fold-down armrest.

With these discounts, something like a Ford Maverick is about the same price and delivers more convenience features, including two additional seats and much better fuel economy. But I’d still have the GMC, obviously, because it can far outperform the Maverick when it comes to real truck stuff. Even in this base, four-cylinder form, the Sierra 1500 can haul 2,230 pounds of payload and tow 9,000 pounds. The Maverick, meanwhile, can only tow 2,000 pounds. Even the most appropriately equipped GMC Canyon can only pull 7,700 pounds.

If you’re wary about whether a four-cylinder is capable enough to handle the demands of a half-ton pickup, don’t be. I’ve driven a couple of Silverados with this engine back when it was new, and I was actually pretty impressed with its pulling power. Honestly, price being equal, I’d probably take it over the 5.3-liter V8 because of the fuel economy benefits.

Howard Bentley’s site says the seven grand discount will only be available until the middle of March, but I bet GMC’s nationwide incentive will stick around until all the 2026 model year four-cylinder trucks are sold. If you’re in the market, I suggest trying to wait them out a bit longer to see just how much better the deals become. But even if you need a truck right now, there are lots of discounts to be found.

Top graphic image: GMC

The post GMC Is Trying To Sell Its Inventory Of 4-Cylinder Trucks And It’s Resulting In Some Extremely Cheap, Brand-New Sierra 1500s appeared first on The Autopian.

A bill intended to prevent businesses from charging high prices in so-called captive audience settings in Colorado — like airports, hospitals and stadiums — was rejected Tuesday during its first committee hearing. 

House Bill 1012 failed in the House Judiciary Committee. There were seven “no” votes and four “yes” votes, with three Democrats on the panel siding with the committee’s four Republicans to kill the measure.

The legislation would have required vendors in captive audience settings — where the options of where to buy food, services and goods are limited — to charge prices that match the average for a comparable product in the surrounding county. 

So if the average price of a hot dog in Denver is $3.50 (we’re guessing here), the bill would have required that it cost the same or less at Coors Field, Ball Arena, Empower Field and the airport. 

State Rep. Yara Zokaie, a Fort Collins Democrat and lead sponsor of the bill, said her measure aimed at combating “funflation.”

“We see that there’s almost this disregard for how these things impact consumers,” she said. 

The bill, as introduced, also would have applied to other settings like hospitals, where it would have aimed to prevent a patient from being charged an exorbitant amount for a Band-Aid or ibuprofen pill. It was amended to limit the measure’s effect in health care settings to cafeterias and gift shops.

But the business community complained that the measure would be too onerous to comply with and didn’t take into account the extra costs that go into selling goods in captive audience settings. 

Nick Hoover of the Colorado Restaurant Association said he understood the goals of the bill, but said food vendors in captive audience settings usually have smaller margins in stadiums and airports despite charging higher prices.

“Those who operate in airports and stadiums have additional costs that are significant,” Hoover said. “Some of our members pay five-figure sponsorship fees to be in a stadium. Thirty to 40% of their revenue goes to their food (suppliers). They usually have to make their food offsite.”

Opponents also argued that consumers don’t have to subject themselves to captive audience settings if they don’t like the higher prices.

State Rep. Matt Soper, a Delta Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said people don’t have a right to go to a sporting event or concert.

“There’s not even a right to fly,” he said. “They are privileges. And someone who has economic means — has the privilege to travel, they have the ability to go to these events to be entertained — they go in (with) eyes wide open that they are going to be paying a lot and that they might be paying more for food or beverage or for parking within those locations. That’s the free market at work.”

State Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee who voted for the bill, said that argument was unfair. 

“Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you can’t have access to entertainment,” she said.

The legislation would also have required third-party delivery apps, like Uber Eats and Door Dash, to display the in-store or in-restaurant price of products they offer alongside their price when they’re purchased for delivery through the app. 

The in-store prices are typically lower, and the bill’s sponsors wanted consumers to be aware of that difference. 

A California man was arrested in February for continuing to stalk a World of Warcraft streamer who goes by the handle Nalipls online. Evan Baltierra, a former United States Marine and Los Angeles World Airport Police officer, was first arrested in 2022 for stalking the World of Warcraft streamer. He pled guilty, but was arrested again months later for violating the terms of his pretrial release. Baltierra was ultimately sentenced to two years in prison. He was released in 2024 before being arrested again on Feb. 27, according to an affidavit filed in a California court and obtained by Aftermath.

Baltierra had been a moderator on Nalipls's Twitch chat. He met the  streamer at Blizzard Entertainment's annual convention, BlizzCon, in 2019, according to the 2022 arrest affidavit. In 2020, he began harassing and stalking her by posting her information online, spreading edited nude images of her, and sending threats to her and her family and friends. Baltierra had been banned several times from World of Warcraft and Battle.net due to the harassment, and Blizzard reportedly hired extra security for Nalipls at events, according to the 2022 arrest affidavit. Nalipls has since stopped streaming on Twitch and has little online presence.

Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent Nicholas Vicencia wrote in an affidavit filed in February that Nalipls contacted him in December 2025 after she started receiving messages from strangers who said they found her contact information on Reddit from a post advertising her interest in "dirty talk" and games. Vicencia determined, with subpoenas to Reddit and AT&T, that the IP address that posted the initial message was tied to Baltierra's father's house, where Baltierra was living.

Vicencia also said that probation officers found a handwritten note with Nalipls' phone number, address, and other private information at his home. "I believe that Baltierra used N.S.'s personal information to create fake online accounts and posts in N.S.' name to continue to stalk and harass N.S.," Vicencia wrote in the affidavit.

Baltierra was arrested at his father's home in California on Feb. 27 and charged with stalking. He's being held in custody ahead of his trial.

Vicencia wrote in the February affidavit that Nalipls has experienced "a great deal of anxiety" from Baltierra's continued harassment, "especially his continued activity after being charged and on supervised release." She's "fearful of what further actions Baltierra might take against her or  her family," he wrote. She has "removed herself as much as possible from online activities," which he described as her primary source of income.

Baltierra's preliminary hearing is set for March 13, followed by a post-indictment arraignment on March 16. Aftermath has reached out to Nalipls and Baltierra's lawyer for comment.

Many women of Twitch face this sort of harassment and stalking, but few find justice. In March 2025, three of Twitch's most popular streamers—Rachel “Valkyrae” Hofstetter, Brittany “Cinna” Watts, and Emily “Emiru” Schunk— were harassed during an IRL stream. A man followed them around after asking for Schunk's phone number, then threatened to kill the women. That same month, streamer Kaitlyn "Amouranth" Siragusa was robbed at gunpoint by three men looking for cryptocurrency. Three teenagers were arrested and charged soon after.

Months later, Schunk was assaulted during a meet-and-greet at TwitchCon, the streaming platform's annual event. A man approached the streamer and attempted to kiss her. The incident came after several women, including Hofstetter and QTCinderella, who has not shared her full name online, pulled out of the convention.

Twitch promised "robust security measures" in the lead-up to the 2025 event. That beefed up security, however, did not prevent Schunk's assault.

“In line with existing TwitchCon security protocols, law enforcement and event security were on site and responded to the incident,” a Twitch representative wrote on X after the incident. “We immediately blocked this individual from returning to the TwitchCon premises, and they are banned indefinitely from Twitch, both online and in-person events. [...] Twitch has zero tolerance for harassment or acts that inhibit the safety and security of our community.”

Vicencia, the FBI agent working Nalipls's case, acknowledged the risk to streamers and their families in the affidavit: "I know that online personalities and their families are at high risk of being targeted by disgruntled fans and other online personas."

If you’ve followed the world of diesel trucks for the past decade, you’re no doubt aware of the drama surrounding aftermarket tuners and defeat devices used to skirt emissions requirements. For years, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice have gone after manufacturers, distributors, and importers of these devices, as well as individuals who use them on their trucks, for violating the Clean Air Act.

Historically, the DoJ has gone after perpetrators by pursuing civil penalties in the form of fines. But in some cases, the agency has also pursued criminal penalties that include higher fines, probation, or actual jail time. The past few years have seen a handful of high-profile cases in which diesel tuners have been sent to prison for designing, installing, or selling defeat devices, in addition to having to pay civil penalties.

That policy is apparently coming to an end. The Department of Justice announced today it plans to stop pursuing criminal charges for these crimes. Here’s what that means.

Civil Charges Over Criminal Charges

The DoJ announced yesterday afternoon on X that it will no longer pursue criminal charges related to the Clean Air Act when the allegations involve tampering with onboard vehicle devices.

Today, @TheJusticeDept is exercising its enforcement discretion to no longer pursue criminal charges under the Clean Air Act based on allegations of tampering with onboard diagnostic devices in motor vehicles.

— DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division (@DOJEnvironment) January 21, 2026

In a follow-up post, the DoJ said it was “committed to sound enforcement principles, efficient use of government resources, and avoiding overcriminalization of federal environmental law.” The DoJ also clarified that it would still pursue civil penalties “when appropriate.”

A DoJ memo obtained by CBS News ordered federal prosecutors to stop pursuing criminal cases against those selling, distributing, or manufacturing defeat devices.

The edict, issued by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, marks the first time that the Justice Department has formally taken steps to scale back environmental criminal enforcement since President Trump took office in January 2025.

In the memo, Blanche wrote that he was taking this step “to ensure consistent and fair prosecution under the law, as well as to ensure the best use of Department resources,” according to a copy reviewed by CBS News.

The decision means that violators can no longer be subject to jail time, but it doesn’t mean they’re totally off the hook. The Clean Air Act is still enforceable by the EPA, and civil penalties are still applicable. That means theoretically, Cummins would’ve still had to pay for its near-$1.7-billion civil fine for installing emissions-cheating devices on engines found in Ram 2500 and 3500 pickups.

As for why the DoJ made this change, CBS claims the push was made by a guy named Adam Gustafson, an assistant attorney general appointed in February.

The push to kill all of the pending defeat device cases was championed by Adam Gustafson, the principal deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division who previously worked for Boeing and at the EPA, according to two of those sources and government records seen by CBS News.

He has not specialized in the practice of criminal environmental law.

Although Gustafson has previously signed off on at least some of the pending indictments involving after-market defeat devices, a new and novel defense bar argument that surfaced over the summer later changed his mind, the sources said.

That argument, according to CBS, came from the owners of Racing Performance Maintenance Northwest, a shop in Washington state. The two owners were convicted last year of conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act after pleading guilty to tampering with a monitoring device, and each was fined $10,000 and sentenced to three years of probation. They later appealed the conviction using a theory that Gustafson posited as worthwhile.

Her attorneys put forth a legal theory alleging that she cannot be held criminally liable because the software associated with emission controls, known as “onboard diagnostic systems,” is not “required to be maintained” under the Clean Air Act.

For this reason, they claimed that such an offense can only be charged as a civil violation, not a criminal one.

Whether you agree with that argument will depend on a lot of things, but for what it’s worth, it sounds like the folks at the EPA have a different opinion. From CBS:

An internal EPA memo reviewed by CBS News shows that career attorneys disagree with the arguments made by defense lawyers in the 9th Circuit case. The memo argues that there are “multiple respects” in which diesel truck emissions software systems are “required to be maintained” under the law, and therefore tampering with them can be a crime.

“When Congress enacted the Clean Air Act, legislators sought to ensure that regulated motor vehicles/engines would meet applicable emission standards not only at the time of manufacture and initial sale, but thereafter in everyday use,” the memo says.

Although the 9th Circuit has not yet ruled on the matter, the legal theory resonated with Gustafson, who started raising questions about the pending cases, one of the sources said.

How The Clean Air Act Has Been Enforced Up Until Now

The Clean Air Act is a wide-ranging law, but in the case of vehicle emissions cheating, it outlaws the manufacturing, selling, or installing of a defeat device, which is “a part for a motor vehicle that bypasses, defeats, or renders inoperative any emission control device,” according to the EPA. The Act also prohibits anyone “from tampering with an emission control device on a motor vehicle by removing it or making it inoperable prior to or after the sale or delivery to the buyer.” Violators are subject to civil penalties “up to $45,268 per noncompliant vehicle or engine, $4,527 per tampering event or sale of defeat device, and $45,268 per day for reporting and record keeping violations,” according to the EPA.

There have been numerous criminal cases brought by the Justice Department based on the Clean Air Act. The most high-profile case is, of course, Volkswagen’s “Dieselgate” scandal, in which researchers discovered the company had installed defeat devices to bypass emissions regulations in secret on around 11 million cars worldwide. More recently, Hino Motors, a subsidiary of Toyota, pleaded guilty in March 2025 to a multi-year emissions fraud scheme involving its diesel engines. No one went to jail, but a judge sentenced Hino to serve five years of probation, where it won’t be able to import diesel engines into the U.S., according to Reuters.

It’s not just OEMs that were subject to criminal prosecution. The DoJ routinely pursued cases of aftermarket defeat device manufacturers, distributors, and installers. In February 2025, an Indiana man was sentenced to four months in prison and given a $25,000 fine after pleading guilty to conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act by tampering with monitoring devices on “hundreds” of vehicles, grossing him $4.3 million in earnings from 2019 and 2021, according to the DoJ.

Back in December 2024, Troy Lake Sr., the owner of the Colorado-based Elite Diesel Service Inc., pleaded guilty to disabling onboard diagnostic systems on at least 344 heavy-duty commercial trucks. He was ordered to pay fines totaling $52,200 and sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison. Lake Sr. served seven months in jail before being released to house arrest to serve out the remainder of his sentence, but was pardoned by President Trump in November 2025.

Trump’s pardon of Lake Sr. came at the behest of Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, who said in a statement that the case was “yet another example of how federal agencies have been weaponized by Democrat administrations against hardworking Americans.”

This move also follows a year of the administration rolling back environmental protection policies aimed at reducing emissions, most notably starting the process to ease fuel economy requirements for new cars and eliminating fuel economy penalties handed out to automakers over the past three years — with the administration’s stated goal being to reduce vehicle costs to the consumer and to help the auto industry. It’s entirely plausible that this move to end criminal prosecutions for defeat device installers and manufacturers is another step in that direction, rather than purely due to different interpretations of the law.

Why You Should Care

There are two sides to this dispute, both with fairly reasonable arguments. On the one hand, people who own their trucks should be able to modify them how they’d like—it’s their property after all, that they paid for with their own money. What they do with their property shouldn’t be anyone’s business but their own. If they want to add things like wider tires, aftermarket intakes, shorter gearing, or different software after the truck has left the factory, they should be able to. This is, in a nutshell, the thought process the DoJ is using to pivot away from criminal prosecutions with regard to emissions tampering.

On the other hand, diesel trucks with defeat devices can be terrible for the air we breathe. A study released by the EPA in 2020 found that more than 550,000 trucks in the decade leading up to the study had their emissions controls tampered with or removed; the results were not good. From the study:

As a result of this tampering, more than 570,000 tons of excess oxides of nitrogen(NOx) and 5,000 tons of particulate matter (PM) will be emitted by these tampered trucks over the lifetime of the vehicles. These tampered trucks constitute approximately 15 percent of the national population of diesel trucks that were originally certified with emissions controls. But, due to their severe excess NOx emissions, these trucks have an air quality impact equivalent to adding more than 9 million additional (compliant, non- tampered) diesel pickup trucks to our roads.

This is also far worse than anything seen from Volkswagen’s folly, according to the guy in charge of the firm that uncovered the Dieselgate scandal. From The New York Times:

In terms of the pollution impact in the United States, “This is far more alarming and widespread than the Volkswagen scandal,” said Drew Kodjak, executive director of the International Council on Clean Transportation, the research group that first alerted the E.P.A. of the illegal Volkswagen technology. “Because these are trucks, the amount of pollution is far, far higher,” he said.

These emissions have real consequences. Nitrogen dioxide and the 5,000 extra tons of industrial soot emitted by these cheating trucks are linked to lung damage and aggravate existing respiratory diseases such as asthma, according to the EPA. Data released by the agency in October suggests that particulate matter causes 15,000 premature deaths every year.

No matter the underlying reason, going forward, the consequences for tuning your diesel truck to roll coal (as an example — there’s other tuning done for drivability/durability reasons) will be a little less dire. Not that I recommend doing it.

Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com, Apple

The post The U.S. Will No Longer Criminally Charge People Who Emissions-Delete Diesel Trucks appeared first on The Autopian.

Michelle Garrison, a state water resources specialist, saw something missing on her January drive from Oregon to Denver. No ice on the roads. No snow in the foothills.

Her mind turned to drought and reservoirs and the recently expired drought management agreement between Colorado and three other states.

“It makes me think that this year is going to be a real challenge,” she said. “It looked like November everywhere I drove.”

Garrison presented this year’s outlook Monday during a meeting in Aurora of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the state’s top water policy agency. As warm and dry conditions continue in the West, the forecasts for the amount of water flowing through the Upper Colorado River Basin keep dropping. For officials like Garrison, it’s hard not to be pessimistic: More dry and warm weather means greater concerns about hydropower generation, recreation and algal blooms on the Western Slope.

And to top it off, the agreement that outlines how Upper Basin states, including Colorado, can help out in drought years expired Dec. 31, and it’s not yet clear from a legal standpoint what that means for this year.

“Things are looking exceedingly grim,” Garrison said as she described this year’s forecasts to the 15-person board.

The meeting kicked off after days of cold temperatures and snow across the Front Range. But the most recent snowstorm was not enough to recover from the worst snowpack on record for Colorado, and the quick return to 40-degree days didn’t help.

Colorado’s mountains harbor a vital water supply that melts and runs through four major rivers and 19 downstream states each year. Garrison’s concerns focused on the water that runs west into the Colorado River Basin, where it collects in an immense reservoir called Lake Powell before it’s released downstream to Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico. 

From November to Jan. 15, the forecasts for that flow of water into Powell, on the Utah-Arizona border, fell by almost 2 million acre-feet. 

One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water use of two to four households. Colorado used about 1.9 million acre-feet of Colorado River water each year, on average, between 1971 and 2024, according to federal data.

And if the warm and dry conditions continue, the water level at Powell is forecast to fall to levels where turbines at Glen Canyon Dam can’t generate as much (or any) electricity and where low water levels could damage the dam’s infrastructure, according to the January 24-month study, a monthly report from the Bureau of Reclamation.

In 2019, four Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — formed a plan, called the Drought Response Operations Agreement, that outlined what the states could do in dry years to avoid dropping to those problematic elevations.

The agreement, called the DROA by the water wonks, aimed to keep Powell’s elevation above 3,525 feet above sea level by either changing when Glen Canyon released water or by sending emergency releases of water down from upstream reservoirs, including Blue Mesa, a federal reservoir and the largest reservoir in Colorado.

The first emergency releases from Blue Mesa and a Wyoming reservoir, Flaming Gorge, were in 2021 and 2022, dry years when water managers worried about the massive dam’s infrastructure.

Locally, the releases dropped reservoir levels, led to algal blooms and left some Western Slope recreation and marina businesses hanging out to dry.

The agreement expired Dec. 31, and water lawyers are working to clarify what that means for water management in 2026 before May when more emergency releases might be needed. 

It’s one of several agreements that expire this year and must be replaced, including Mexico’s Colorado River agreement and reservoir operation rules from 2007. Negotiations among states to replace the 2007 rules have been at an impasse for two years.

Technical experts like Garrison, however, are still planning for potential emergency measures. 

“The Upper Basin is so strongly hydrology-driven, that I think (drought) is always on our minds,” Garrison said. “We always feel like we have to be planning for drought.”

Powell’s water level can vary by as much as 20 to 30 feet in a year, Garrison said. 

Keeping Powell’s elevation above 3,525 feet preserves an important cushion above 3,490 feet, when the dam hits a crisis point.

At that elevation, Glen Canyon Dam’s turbines can’t generate any electricity — and that would prompt electric utilities to turn to more costly, less renewable energy sources. The dam’s electricity is normally pooled with other power sources to serve customers in Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas and Utah.

Lake Powell’s elevation was 3,536 feet as of Monday. It stored 6.2 million acre-feet of water, or about 25% of its capacity.

Under the drought agreement, the reservoirs can release about 500,000 acre-feet for Powell. But if warm and dry conditions continue, the DROA emergency releases might not be enough to fill the gap and avoid problems at Powell, Garrison said. 

At that point, Reclamation might have to cut releases from Powell for Arizona, California and Nevada, Garrison said. The releases are currently set to be 7.48 million acre-feet but can be cut as low as 6 million acre-feet under a 2024 interstate agreement.

The Bureau of Reclamation, which manages Glen Canyon, is already reining in winter reservoir releases, Garrison said. Technical experts are meeting monthly, or even more frequently. Federal officials called top negotiators and governors from the seven basin states to meet in Washington, D.C., this week to try to resolve differences over how to manage the river. 

The whole situation has left water officials, like Garrison, worried. The Colorado River’s water provides water for 40 million people in the West. It’s the foundation of western economies and national food supplies.

Looking at the forecast, Garrison said she was feeling pessimistic. 

“It’s just a real struggle for everybody to be dealing with hydrology this dry when you’re trying to set up what you’re going to do in the future,” she said. “It’s going to be hard.”

One of the biggest differences between running a gas-powered car and an electric car is that an electric car does not emit any local exhaust fumes or particulate matter. Because of this, most people have simply assumed that replacing gas-powered cars with electric cars would, in a given environment, improve air quality and subsequently improve the health of people living there.

That assumption, according to Phys.org, a science and research news site, hasn’t really ever been tested on a large scale, due to the limitations of testing equipment. That is, until now.

Thanks to satellite data from NASA, the Keck School of Medicine at USC has been able to create “the first real-world study showing statistically significant reductions in observed NO₂ air pollution associated with the ongoing transition to light-duty electric vehicles over time.”

Improvements By The Numbers

The USC study, published by the school in The Lancet Planetary Health journal, looked at satellite data from 1,687 California neighborhoods—the study calls them “ZIP code tabulation areas,” or ZCTAs. It found that, on average, for every 200 zero-emission vehicles added to each neighborhood, that area saw a 1.1% decrease in nitrogen dioxide (NO₂₎ levels.

USC was able to analyze these 1,687 areas from 2019 to 2023 using a satellite called Sentinel 5, operated by the European Space Agency (ESA). It has a device onboard called the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI). This tool analyzes light reflected from the Earth’s surface to identify gases that lie in the atmosphere. It’s a pretty trick piece of gear, going by the ESA’s website:

What sets Tropomi apart is that it measures in the ultraviolet and visible (270–500 nm), near-infrared (675–775 nm) and shortwave infrared (2305–2385 nm) spectral bands. This means that a wide range of pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, ozone, formaldehyde, sulphur dioxide, methane and carbon monoxide can be imaged more accurately than ever before. With a resolution as high as 7 km × 3.5 km, it has the potential to detect air pollution over individual cities.

According to the study, the data is collected by the satellite once a day at roughly 1:30 p.m. local time and published for free by NASA, which is how USC got hold of it. The study links to the raw data on NASA’s site, which you can download and analyze for yourself if you feel inspired to learn about how much nitrogen dioxide might be hovering in your local township.

As Phys.org points out, this is not the first time USC has released a study looking at the effects of electric car adoption. It released a study linking EVs to less air pollution in 2023, but that study used limited data from ground-based monitors. Ground-based testing methods were used again, this time, but only to confirm the data from the satellite. From Phys.org:

To confirm that these results were reliable, the researchers conducted several additional analyses. They accounted for pandemic-related changes as a contributor to NO₂ decline, such as excluding the year 2020 and controlling for changing gas prices and work-from-home patterns. The researchers also confirmed that neighborhoods that added more gas-powered cars saw the expected rise in pollution. Finally, they replicated their results using updated data from ground-level monitors from 2012 to 2023.

Here’s Why It All Matters

As a reminder, nitrogen dioxide can be bad for human health. Take it from the people who wrote the study:

“This immediate impact on air pollution is really important because it also has an immediate impact on health. We know that traffic-related air pollution can harm respiratory and cardiovascular health over both the short and long term,” said Erika Garcia, Ph.D., MPH, assistant professor of population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine and the study’s senior author.

[…]

“We’re not even fully there in terms of electrifying, but our research shows that California’s transition to electric vehicles is already making measurable differences in the air we breathe,” said the study’s lead author, Sandrah Eckel, Ph.D., associate professor of population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine.

If you’d rather hear it from a source not associated with the study, take this excerpt from the EPA‘s website:

Breathing air with a high concentration of NO₂ can irritate airways in the human respiratory system. Such exposures over short periods can aggravate respiratory diseases, particularly asthma, leading to respiratory symptoms (such as coughing, wheezing or difficulty breathing), hospital admissions and visits to emergency rooms. Longer exposures to elevated concentrations of NO₂ may contribute to the development of asthma and potentially increase susceptibility to respiratory infections. People with asthma, as well as children and the elderly are generally at greater risk for the health effects of NO₂.

This study seems to show what everyone already assumed: Driving cars that emit no local polluting gases makes the local air cleaner. It also brings up another point: You might not have to go all-in on pure EVs to make a material difference in air quality. It’s important to make the distinction here that USC didn’t just analyze the adoption of pure electric cars. When it collected data from the California DMV, it also counted plug-in hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as “zero-emissions cars” for this study, coinciding with California’s definition of the term.

Phys.org argues the 1.1% drop wasn’t just due to battery-electric cars, but a mix of buyers adopting EVs, plug-in hybrids, extended-range hybrids, and hydrogen-powered vehicles. But the study doesn’t actually determine how much of that decrease can be attributed to BEVs or plug-ins. It’s entirely possible that every plug-in hybrid driver included in this study drove purely on gas power, and the BEVs involved were efficient enough to make up the difference.

Either way, this study reveals what was already pretty obvious:  If cars driving around don’t emit any local tailpipe emissions, then of course the air will be cleaner. Now, though, it’s both obvious and measurable.

Top graphic image: Toyota

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