Extreme, record-breaking flooding sweeps through southern Texas
ABC News
(TEXAS) — A large part of South Texas is reeling from life-threatening flooding that began overnight and continued into Friday morning.
Thunderstorms began Wednesday, with another round of heavy rainfall on Thursday afternoon and evening. The rain is expected to continue through Friday afternoon, forecasts show.
The National Weather Service issued flash flooding emergency warnings multiple times on Thursday and overnight for South McAllen and Harlingen — both located in the Rio Grande Valley in the southernmost parts of Texas.
“This is a particularly dangerous situation,” the NWS said in a statement issued Thursday night, urging people to avoid travel unless fleeing a region subject to flooding or are under an evacuation order.
The region received between 6 inches and a foot of rain or more in some areas, according to the NWS. McAllen got more than 6 inches of rain, while more than 14 inches was recorded at the Valley International Airport in Harlingen.
The NWS received reports for several vehicles stranded on Interstate 2 in waist-deep water, according to the agency. Dozens of water rescues took place as a result of the flash flooding.
Video shows first responders in inflatable boats rescuing people stranded on roadways. The South Texas Health System hospital in McAllen experienced minor flooding on its first floor.
Flooding continued into Friday morning, with rivers nearly overflowing. A flood watch is in effect for parts of South Texas and southern Louisiana.
Water levels at the Arroyo Colorado River at Harlingen are nearing a record-breaking 30 feet. There is no precedent for the kind of damage a 30-foot water level in the Arroyo Colorado River could do, according to the NWS. The previous record water levels measured at the Arroyo Colorado River was 24 feet.
The flooding stemmed from a stationary boundary — a front between warm and cold air masses that moves very slowly or not at all. A band of significantly heavy storms was forming over the same hard-hit areas on Friday morning. A storm with 3-inch rain rates was forming over Harlingen on Friday morning.
The system also conjured up a tornado, with a twister reported near Edcouch, Texas, about 25 miles northeast of McAllen, that damaged several structures.
The potential for showers and thunderstorms in this region is expected to continue through the afternoon, with the threat ending Friday evening, forecasts show.
(ANN ARBOR, MI) — One of the alleged victims in a widespread hacking scandal involving a former University of Michigan football coach said she feels “betrayed” by the school and is fearful that her personal information was further leaked online.
The woman is one of two anonymous plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed a day after the Department of Justice announced Matthew Weiss had been indicted on two dozen federal charges alleging he hacked into thousands of athlete and alumni accounts and downloaded private data, including intimate photos, over eight years.
“It never would have crossed my mind that I could have been involved, and that’s, I think, why there’s so much outrage on our end,” the woman, a former University of Michigan female athlete, told “Good Morning America.”
The Jane Doe said she was at the University of Michigan for six years as a student and employee and does not know Weiss.
“I’ve been a fan of the university my entire life,” she said. “To know that I put so much trust and so much faith into that institution, and they have betrayed me in such a significant way — I mean, it’s terrifying.”
Citing the allegations in the indictment against Weiss, the lawsuit claimed that Weiss was able to gain unauthorized access to the student-athlete databases of more than 100 colleges and universities maintained by Keffer Development Services, LLC, a Pennsylvania-based company, and downloaded the personally identifiable information and medical data of over 150,000 athletes.
The former coach is then accused of unlawfully gaining access to the social media, email and/or cloud storage accounts of more than 3,300 people, including the two plaintiffs, and then downloading personal, intimate photos and videos. Weiss primarily targeted female college athletes, the indictment alleged.
“I don’t think there’s really any way to know exactly what information of mine is out there,” the Jane Doe said. “It’s kind of one of those things that you can’t really shut off.”
Weiss is among the defendants in the lawsuit. ABC News has reached out to his attorney for comment on the lawsuit and federal charges and has not gotten a response.
The University of Michigan and the Regents of the University of Michigan are also named as defendants in the lawsuit, which alleged that as a result of their “recklessness and negligence,” Weiss downloaded the women’s “personal, intimate digital photographs and videos.”
“I obviously am afraid of an individual that’s capable of doing something like this, but I’m possibly more afraid of a university that has the opportunity to prevent it from happening and doesn’t,” the Jane Doe said.
In response to the lawsuit, Kay Jarvis, the director of public affairs for the University of Michigan, said in a statement to ABC News, “We have not been served with the complaint and cannot comment on pending litigation.”
Keffer is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, which claimed that the company’s alleged “misconduct, negligence, and recklessness also contributed to Weiss invading the privacy of Plaintiffs and their fellow student athletes.” ABC News has reached out to the company for comment and has not gotten a response.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the two plaintiffs and as a potential class action on behalf of other alleged victims. The number of potential class members is unclear but is estimated to exceed 1,000, the lawsuit stated.
Parker Stinar, a managing partner with the Chicago-based firm Stinar Gould Grieco & Hensley who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs, said he hopes to find out more about what happened to the alleged victims’ information and “to better understand how the university failed these individuals and to hold them accountable.”
“We’re talking about the University of Michigan, one of the largest, most powerful and respected academic institutions in the world, that allowed this to take place by one of their employees,” Stinar told “Good Morning America.”
Stinar said this “isn’t the first time that we have seen the University of Michigan fail their alumni and their athletes,” pointing to the case of the late Dr. Robert Anderson, who served as the school’s sports team physician for decades and was accused of molesting or sexually abusing more than 1,000 victims. In 2022, the university reached a $490 million settlement in connection with the allegations.
“We’re seeing it again, where the university has failed to protect those that give their blood, sweat and tears to the school,” Stinar said.
Weiss, 42, was arraigned Monday on 14 counts of unauthorized access to computers and 10 counts of aggravated identity theft. A not guilty plea was entered on his behalf, The Associated Press reported. His attorney, Douglas Mullkoff, declined to comment to the AP following the proceeding. ABC News also reached out to Mulkoff multiple times, but did not receive a response.
Weiss was released on a $10,000 unsecured bond, ESPN reported.
If convicted, Weiss could face up to five years in prison on each count of unauthorized access and two years on each count of aggravated identity theft, according to the attorney’s office.
(NEW YORK) — As the Mid-Atlantic digs out from a significant snowstorm, a new winter storm is underway in the Plains that will move through the Midwest before reaching the East Coast.
On Wednesday morning, the second storm is hitting Kansas City, Missouri, and Des Moines, Iowa.
The storm will reach Chicago later in the morning, dropping 4 to 6 inches of snow.
An ice storm warning has been issued for Toledo, Ohio, where ice accumulation could cause power outages.
The storm will move into the Northeast on Wednesday evening, bringing mostly rain to the Interstate 95 corridor and an icy mix to New England and upstate New York.
On the southern end of the storm, heavy rain could bring flash flooding from Louisiana to North Carolina.
Strong tornadoes are possible in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
This comes after another snowstorm walloped the Mid-Atlantic on Tuesday.
Virginia recorded more than 14 inches of snow and West Virginia recorded 13 inches. Trees are toppling in Virginia due to the coating of snow and ice and over 170,000 customers in the state are without power on Wednesday morning.
Public schools are closed on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., where there’s more than 6 inches of snow on the ground.
Philadelphia saw 2.6 inches of snow and New York City saw 1.4 inches.
(WASHINGTON) — Environmental lawyers would argue that part of the American dream is the right to live in a clean environment – a freedom from worry that the air you breathe, the food you eat and the water you drink are without pollutants and toxins that could make you sick.
But several of the environmental freedoms Americans experience today – clean air, clean water and clean rain among them – could soon be in jeopardy from the Environmental Protection Agency’s deregulation plans, several experts told ABC News.
On March 12, the EPA announced sweeping moves in its effort to walk back environmental protections and eliminate a host of climate change regulations, changes described by the agency as the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced earlier this month that the agency will undertake 31 actions, including rolling back emission regulations on coal, oil and gas production. The announcement also said the EPA will reevaluate government findings that determined that greenhouse gas emissions heat the planet and are a threat to public health. In addition, the EPA plans to eliminate its scientific research office and may have plans to fire more than 1,000 employees, The New York Times reported last week.
“Alongside President Trump, we are living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, and work hand-in-hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission,” Zeldin said in the EPA announcement.
The EPA, with its mission to protect human health and the environment, is fundamentally a public health organization, Patrick Simms, vice president for healthy communities at Earthjustice, the nation’s largest public interest environmental law firm, told ABC News.
Revoking these regulations would hamper the EPA’s ability to keep Americans from getting sick from the exposure to environmental pollutants, experts said.
“Any policy changes that may occur under this Administration will continue to protect human health and the environment,” and EPA spokesperson said in response to an ABC News request for comment. ”They will be guided by science and the law, as well as input from the public. They will also be guided by many of the Executive Orders issued by the President and EPA Administrator Zeldin’s Powering the Great American Comeback Initiative.”
Impacts some experts fear most from EPA deregulation
Environmental impacts such as toxic air, poisoned water and acid rain that killed forests and caused crop failures were all occurring prior to EPA regulations, the experts said.
Bedrock environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act were all established after the EPA was created in 1970 under Republican President Richard Nixon.
Some of the regulations Zeldin has proposed eliminating could negatively affect the safety of drinking water and the amount of pollutants that are released into the atmosphere, Simms said.
Additionally, the rollbacks having to do with air pollutants means those toxins will be deposited back into the soil, Murray McBride, a soil and crop scientist and retired Cornell University professor, told ABC News. Coal ash, for example, contains heavy metals, which are absorbed especially by crops like leafy greens, McBride said.
Loosening wastewater rules will pollute soil and negatively impact crops even more, McBride said.
Should the EPA cease monitoring environmental pollutants, it would be especially dangerous for people with underlying health conditions, such as asthma or heart illness, Paul Anastas, director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University and former assistant administrator for the EPA, told ABC News.
“People don’t know what they’re breathing when data is not being collected,” Anastas said. “You don’t know whether or not your water is contaminated.”
Deregulation would greatly reduce the country’s momentum in transitioning away from fossil fuels as well, Michael Gerrard, a professor of environmental law at Columbia Law School, told ABC News.
“This moves us even further behind, and it inevitably will mean that the extreme weather events we’ve experienced, the floods and the heat waves and the wildfires and so forth, will get worse,” he said.
U.S. environmental issues prior to the EPA
In the late 1960s, there was an “explosion” of public concern about environmental conditions in the country said A. James Barnes, a professor of law and environment and public affairs at Indiana University and former EPA general counsel and deputy administrator.
The year 1970 was monumental for progress in environmental protection, Barnes said. The first Earth Day occurred in April 1970, and when the EPA was established in December of that year, Barnes served as chief of staff to William Ruckelshaus, the first EPA administrator.
“In 1970, when most of the current environmental laws were initially adopted, we lived in a very different and much more hazardous and toxic country,” Simms said.
Smoke pollution and disposal of waste and sewage were at the top of the list of concerns, Barnes said. A significant portion of untreated municipal sewage was still being dumped into rivers and lakes. Hazardous waste was being dumped into landfills along with household garbage and was often incinerated, which in turn sent the toxic materials into the atmosphere. Some rivers were so polluted that they caught fire, as did Ohio’s Cuyahoga River in 1969, Barnes noted.
Lake Erie was considered to be “dying” because it was choking on an uncontrolled growth of algae due to the pollution, according to Barnes, who grew up in industrialized Michigan and recalled fishing in Lake Erie, where he caught carp that had “huge sores” on them.
“You wouldn’t want anything to do with possibly eating it,” Barnes said.
All major U.S. cities had unhealthy levels of carbon monoxide from motor vehicle emissions, before the EPA required that cars manufactured after 1975 be equipped with a catalytic converter to remove pollutants from automotive emissions, said Gerrard.
A chronic smog of air pollutants that hung over Los Angeles was viewed as a “national joke” at the time, Barnes said, while in places that had steel mills, like Pittsburgh and Birmingham, it was not unusual to see blackened skies from the heavy amounts of pollution in the air.
“Your eyes burned,” Barnes said. “Your lungs were aggravated by the quality of the air.”
Additionally, exposure to lead and mercury contaminants in the environment was causing brain damage in some people, according to Anastas.
Coal was the dominant source of electricity production, the burning of which reduced air quality due to high levels of sulfur dioxide and particulates emitted during production and use, Gerard said.
Atmospheric ozone pollution and acid rain would often damage crops, McBride said.
“In general, the air quality and water quality in 1970 were much, much worse than they are today,” Gerrard said.
History serves as a reminder of what could again happen if actions are not taken to protect health and the environment, experts warned.
“If we don’t understand our history, we’re doomed to repeat it,” Simms said.
ABC News’ Matthew Glasser, Kelly Livingston and MaryAlice Parks contributed to this report.
