Category: Water

Meet Arizona's Water One-Percenters

4/8/2021

In Phoenix, two cities are emerging: one is water-rich, the other water-poor Every two weeks, Dawn Upton floods her lawn. She treks into her back yard, twists open two valves big as dinner plates, and within minutes is ankle-deep in water. “You have to have irrigation boots, girl,” she says during a video tour of her property in Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. She flips her camera to reveal green grass, then tilts her phone skyward at four towering palm trees. As she walks, she pans across pecan, pomegranate, and citrus trees – lemon, orange, a grapefruit sapling. A tortoise, between 80 and 100lb, lumbers toward her, chewing. “There’s Simba,” Upton says. “Hey buddy! What is that, Simba? You can’t eat it.” She pats him affectionately on the head. - Guardian

Agencies: Arizona farmers should expect less water in 2022

4/8/2021

State officials are putting farmers in south-central Arizona on notice that the continuing drought means a “substantial cut" in deliveries of Colorado River water is expected next year. A statement issued Friday by the state Department of Water Resources and the Central Arizona Project said an expected shortage declaration “will result in a substantial cut to Arizona’s share of the river, with reductions falling largely to central Arizona agricultural users." - AZ Family

Known For Its Floods, Louisiana Is Running Dangerously Short Of Groundwater

3/19/2021

Louisiana is known for its losing battle against rising seas and increasingly frequent floods. It can sometimes seem like the state has too much water. But the aquifers deep beneath its swampy landscape face a critical shortage. Groundwater levels in and around Louisiana are falling faster than almost anywhere else in the country, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. An analysis traced the problem to decades of overuse, unregulated pumping by industries and agriculture, and scant oversight or action from legislative committees rife with conflicts of interest. Experts warn that all of these factors threaten the groundwater that nearly two-thirds of Louisianans rely on for drinking and bathing. Combined with the expected effects of climate-fueled heat and drought, it puts Louisiana on the brink of a groundwater crisis more common in Western states. - NPR

River Colors are Changing

2/27/2021

Much like the sky, rivers are rarely painted one color. Across the world, they appear in shades of yellow, green, blue, and brown. Subtle changes in the environment can alter the color of rivers, though, shifting them away from their typical hues. New research shows the dominant color has changed in about one-third of large rivers in the continental United States over the past 35 years “Changes in river color serve as a first pass that tell us something is going on nearby,” said John Gardner, the study’s lead author and a hydrologist at the University of Pittsburgh. “There are a lot of details to parse out on what is causing those changes, though.” - NASA Earth Observatory

The Plastic Industry Is Growing During COVID. Recycling? Not So Much

2/17/2021

Unlike most industries during COVID-19, plastic manufacturers are seeing production increase in the midst of a global economic downturn. That growth also means more plastic in landfills — a problem, according to environmental advocates, who say that corporate efforts to curb waste, including a stated goal of recycling all plastic packaging by 2040, are insufficient. “Pour money into it; build it; it’ll all get recycled — that’s the myth they’re promoting,” Ivy Schlegel, a plastics researcher with the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace, told FRONTLINE. Production of plastic resins, the building blocks of all plastic products, increased 0.9 percent in the U.S. in 2020, compared to 1.2 percent in 2019. Despite smaller growth than the previous year, plastic was the only segment of the U.S. chemistry industry, which includes everything from fertilizer to synthetic rubber, to expand last year, according to a year-end report by the American Chemistry Council. The report projects that plastics will be the fastest-growing part of the industry through 2030, factoring in economic recovery, the anticipated end of the pandemic and other variables. - Frontline

Forever Chemicals Are Widespread in U.S. Drinking Water

2/7/2021

Many Americans fill up a glass of water from their faucet without worrying whether it might be dangerous. But the crisis of lead-tainted water in Flint, Mich., showed that safe, potable tap water is not a given in this country. Now a study from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit advocacy organization, reveals a widespread problem: the drinking water of a majority of Americans likely contains “forever chemicals.” These compounds may take hundreds, or even thousands, of years to break down in the environment. They can also persist in the human body, potentially causing health problems. A handful of states have set about trying to address these contaminants, which are scientifically known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). But no federal limits have been set on the concentration of the chemicals in water, as they have for other pollutants such as benzene, uranium and arsenic. With a new presidential administration coming into office this week, experts say the federal government finally needs to remedy that oversight. “The PFAS pollution crisis is a public health emergency,” wrote Scott Faber, EWG’s senior vice president for government affairs, in a recent public statement. - Scientific American

Lakes Mead & Powell Could Drop to Lowest Ever; Drought Plan Triggered

1/22/2021

Increasingly bleak forecasts for the Colorado River have for the first time put into action elements of the 2019 Upper Basin drought contingency plan. The 24-month study released in January by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which projects two years of operations at the river’s biggest reservoirs, showed Lake Powell possibly dipping below an elevation of 3,525 feet above sea level in 2022. That elevation was designated as a critical threshold in a 2019 agreement to preserve the ability to produce hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam. - Cronkite News

The North Carolina Hog Industry's Answer to Pollution: $500m Pipeline Project

1/5/2021

This is the same issue we address in the water modules in GLG101 and GLG110. Corporations take the profits; the citizens pay for the cleanup. Always investigate fully.

Instead of implementing safer systems, activists say Smithfield Foods is seeking to profit from hog waste under the guise of ‘renewable energy’ - Guardian

A Desert City Tries to Save Itself With Rain

11/25/2020

In an average year, Brad Lancaster can harvest enough rain to meet 95% of his water needs. Roof runoff collected in tanks on his modest lot in Tucson, Arizona where 100 degree days are common in the summer months — provides what he needs to bathe, cook and drink. When Lancaster gets thirsty, he sips filtered rain “known as sweet water,” he says, having never picked up salt from soil. When he wants a hot shower, he places his outdoor shower’s water tank in the sun. To irrigate his fruit trees beyond the Sonoran Desert’s two rainy seasons, which bring the vast majority of Tucson’s precipitation, he uses fresh rainwater or greywater — the latter being, in his case, used rainwater leftover from the shower, sink, or washing machine. - Bloomberg

One of America’s Most Famous Lakes Is Disappearing. Utah’s Next governor Can Help.

11/16/2020

Opinion - Green lawns will soon need to become a thing of the past in Northern Utah, difficult though that may be for many who have a traditional view of the suburban family home. Also, the average new home lot will need to shrink by 14% to 24%. Without these measures, the Great Salt Lake, one of the region’s environmental, tourism and economic giants, will continue to dwindle away. Currently, it is shrinking because of drought and diversions upstream to handle growth in Utah’s largest metropolitan areas. Imagine Northern Utah without the lake. The consequences would be enormous. It serves as an ecosystem to millions of birds and other wildlife. It often creates its own localized weather patterns that provide much-needed snow to Wasatch Front mountains. Its loss could cost the state’s economy more than $2 billion a year and 6,500 jobs in the mineral, brine shrimp and tourism industries. The more the lake dries away, the greater the risks of dust storms accentuated by the dry lake bed, which could create environmental and health dangers in populated areas. Saving the lake ought to become a priority of the new administration of Utah Gov.-elect Spencer Cox. - Deseret News

Water recedes at the Great Salt Lake on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020. A new study shows water conservation could put off the need for new water development by as long as 2065 and help save the dwindling Great Salt Lake

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