As the ocean warms across its temperate regions, kelp forests are collapsing and turf algae species are taking over. This shift from dense canopies of tall kelp to low-lying mats of turf algae is driving biodiversity loss and altering the flow of energy and nutrients through reef ecosystems.

It’s also fundamentally altering the chemical ecology of coastal ecosystems.

New research in Science, led by researchers at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, has shown for the first time how turf algae release chemicals that can kill young kelp. That creates a feedback loop where more turf algae means more harmful chemicals, which further inhibits recovery and reinforces kelp forest collapse. This chemically-mediated interaction, which scientists call allelopathy — or what the authors more bluntly call chemical warfare — reveals an indirect way that climate change is reshaping ocean ecosystems, complicating kelp forest recovery along Maine’s rapidly warming coast.

The study also includes researchers from University of Maine, University of California Riverside, University of Tübingen, Perry Institute for Marine Science, and Harvard University, working together to combine extensive field surveys, advanced chemical analysis, and novel lab experiments.

“That’s why this study is so powerful,” said Bigelow Laboratory Senior Research Scientist Doug Rasher, the study’s senior author. “It moves logically from describing a pattern in nature — the lack of recovery of kelp forests — to revealing that the chemical landscape of kelp forests and turf reefs are fundamentally different, to pinpointing that turf algae and the chemicals they exude prevent kelp recruitment.”

The impacts of kelp forest collapse and replacement by turf algae have been well documented in temperate ecosystems around the world.

“This shift from kelp to turf is analogous to a terrestrial forest transitioning into a grassland,” said the study’s lead author, Shane Farrell, a UMaine doctoral candidate based in Rasher’s research group. “With the loss of kelp forests, we see decreases in biodiversity, productivity, and the ecosystem services they provide to humans.”

Previous work has shown that once turf algae are established, they can inhibit kelp recovery by taking up space on the reef or harboring small grazers that eat baby kelp.

In tropical ecosystems, such as rainforests and coral reefs, scientists have previously shown that changes in the chemical environment also play a role in locking ecosystems into a degraded state and preventing recovery of foundational species. But no studies had considered whether that kind of chemical change could be at play in temperate kelp forests.

To answer this question, the researchers completed three years of field surveys across the Gulf of Maine, documenting a pattern of new kelp struggling to survive in the southern reaches of Maine’s coast where forests have collapsed. During those surveys, the team collected water and seaweed samples for chemical analysis.

Rather than focusing on known substances, they teamed up with Daniel Petras’s research group at the University of California, Riverside, employing non-targeted metabolomics analysis to understand the diverse chemistry in the samples. This approach involves analyzing all the small molecules within a system, which enabled the researchers to broadly identify the unique chemical features — in the water, in the seaweeds, and on the reef itself — at both kelp- and turf algae-dominated sites.

To characterize the suite of waterborne chemicals present, these methods rely on separating the molecules and breaking them into fragments, which are then matched against reference libraries, much like identifying a person from a fingerprint.

But, as Farrell pointed out, less than 2% of the chemical features the researchers found in this environment had been previously described. To fill in those gaps, the team turned to novel computational tools, which use chemical fragmentation patterns to predict compound identities, molecular formulas, and even chemical structures. These predictions allowed the researchers to classify unknown compounds into broad chemical families, highlighting just how distinct the chemical environment of a kelp forest is from a turf-dominated reef.

“It is awesome to see how our non-targeted metabolomics tools can shed new light on the fascinating chemical complexity caused by shifting environments, such as invasive algae,” Petras said. “This becomes especially powerful when we combine our chemical data with functional information, such as kelp survival.”

In a series of laboratory experiments, the researchers then tested the effects of both all the waterborne chemicals around the turf-dominated reefs, and the specific chemicals released by the five most abundant species of turf algae, on gametophytes, an early life stage of kelp. The experiments showed that gametophyte survival declined dramatically — up to 500% in some cases — when exposed to chemicals released by turf algae, confirming that the new chemical environment is directly responsible for kelp mortality.

“Our study is the first to reveal that chemical warfare can underpin the rebound potential of cold-water kelp forests. And surprisingly, some of the same types of molecules we identified on turf reefs are involved in the recovery dynamics of tropical coral reefs too,” Rasher said. “It shows we have a lot to learn about chemical warfare on temperate reefs, the organisms and molecules involved, and how this process varies globally.”

Previous work by Rasher’s research group confirmed that ocean warming is the primary driver of kelp forest decline in the Gulf of Maine. But these new findings, showing how turf algae can lock an ecosystem into a degraded state, will make it more challenging to promote kelp forest recovery.

“Once turf algae are established, just curbing global carbon emissions and reversing ocean warming is not going to bring Maine’s kelp forests back,” Farrell said. “Because of these feedback mechanisms, we need local interventions to remove the turf algae before kelp will actually recover.”

This study was supported by the NSF Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (Grant #OIA-1849227), the Louise H. & David S. Ingalls Foundation, the PADI Foundation, the Essex Avenue Foundation, and the German Research Foundation.

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/05/250522162700.htm

Study finds real-time household water data reduces consumption

A UC Riverside-led study has found that a smartphone app that tracks household water use and alerts users to leaks or excessive consumption offers a promising tool for helping California water agencies meet state-mandated conservation goals.

Led by Mehdi Nemati, an assistant professor of public policy at UCR, the study found that use of the app — called Dropcountr — reduced average household water use by 6%, with even greater savings among the highest water users.

Dropcountr works by interpreting water-use data from smart water meters, which many utilities originally installed for remote reading to streamline billing. The app turns data from these meters into real-time feedback for consumers, showing how much water they use, how their usage compares to similar households, and how it has changed over time.

This type of digital feedback gives users what behavioral economists call a “nudge” — a timely prompt to take water-saving actions, such as taking shorter showers, fixing leaks, or delaying using appliances like dishwashers and washing machines until they are full.

The app also alerts users when their consumption nears costly higher-rate tiers and notifies them of possible leaks. Utilities also can use the app to send customers tips for cutting use and notify them of rebate programs, such as those for replacing lawns with drought-tolerant landscaping.

“California water agencies are under pressure to hit individualized water-use targets and conservation goals under the ‘Making Conservation a California Way of Life’ regulation,” Nemati said. “Our study shows that this digital feedback tool can be a powerful, low-cost way to help households manage their use and reduce consumption.”

The research focused on the City of Folsom in Northern California, where Dropcountr was offered to residential customers beginning in late 2014. About 3,600 households volunteered for the program, which collected smart meter data from 2013 to 2019. This allowed researchers to analyze more than 32 million records of daily water use.

The findings, published in the journal Resource and Energy Economics, showed that participating households reduced their daily consumption by an average of 6.2% compared to a control group. The reduction was greater among high-volume users. The top 20% of users cut their water use by up to 12%.

“This is a crucial outcome when every drop counts,” Nemati said. “We found strong, statistically significant reductions, especially for high-use customers.”

Dropcountr also uses behavioral science concepts, especially the power of social norms. Users receive personalized water-use summaries that show how their consumption stacks up against more efficient nearby households, helping them set reasonable and achievable conservation goals. The app also flags possible leaks by detecting continuous usage patterns — such as when water use remains steady for 72 hours. These alerts were found to be especially effective: Water use dropped roughly 50% on the day after a leak alert was sent, followed by a 30% drop the next day, and a sustained 9% reduction even six days later. “The sharp drop suggests customers are paying attention and acting quickly,” Nemati said. “One major advantage is that they can detect leaks right away — sometimes before they cause damage or result in costly bills. That’s difficult with traditional billing systems, where usage is only seen after 30 or 60 days.” Importantly, the study also found that these behavioral changes lasted. “We looked at water use 50 months out and still found sustained reductions,” Nemati said. “People weren’t just reacting once and forgetting. They stayed engaged.”

The app works best with homes equipped with smart meters, while many homes in California still rely on older, manually read meters. Fortunately, adoption of advanced metering infrastructure continues to expand.

Still, Nemati noted, many agencies that do have smart meters continue to rely on outdated methods — like mailed letters — to notify customers of high usage or leaks.

“People get water bills, but the information may not be salient. Most bills report usage in cubic feet or units, which aren’t easy to interpret,” Nemati said. “What platforms like Dropcountr do well is make the data meaningful. People want to use water wisely. They just need timely, clear, and actionable feedback. These platforms give them that — and they work.”

With California preparing to enforce stricter drought and efficiency standards, Nemati said more utilities should consider deploying digital tools like Dropcountr.

“We have the data,” he said. “Now we just need to use it in smarter ways. This study shows how a relatively inexpensive solution can help homeowners conserve and ease pressure on our water systems.”

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/05/250527124635.htm

PFOS, also known as “forever chemicals,” are synthetic compounds popular for several commercial applications like making products resistant to stains, fire, grease, soil and water. They have been used in non-stick cookware, carpets, rugs, upholstered furniture, food packaging and firefighting foams deployed at airports and military airfields. PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate or perfluorooctane sulfonic acid) are part of the larger class of forever chemicals called PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.) Both types have been linked to a variety of health issues, including liver disease, immune system malfunction, developmental issues and cancer.

Because of their widespread use, PFOS are found in soil, agricultural products and drinking water sources, presenting a health risk.

Xiaoguang Meng and Christos Christodoulatos, professors at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, and Ph.D. student Meng Ji working in their lab, wanted to identify the most efficient way to remove these toxins from the water.

Most water filters use activated carbon to remove forever chemicals and other contaminants.

Activated carbon removes PFOS through a process called adsorption, in which the PFOS molecules stick to the large, porous surface area of the carbon particles as the water flows through them.

However, in the wastewater industry, iron powder — in scientific terms called microscale zero-valent iron or mZVI — is also used to remove contaminants from the effluent.

“Iron powder is commonly used for water treatment and wastewater treatment, because it’s cheap — it’s cheaper than activated carbon,” says Meng.

They wanted to compare the adsorption potency of iron powder and activated carbon.

They found that iron powder was a better water purifier. “The iron powder was 26 times more effective than activated carbon per unit surface area,” says Ji. Researchers outlined their findings in the study titled Kinetic and Mechanism Study of PFOS Removal by Microscale Zero-Valent Iron from Water, published in Environmental Science & Technology, an ACS (American Chemical Society) publication, on March 19, 2025.

More interestingly, the team found that even when the iron powder rusted from being in the water, its adsorption properties weren’t affected much.

“The particles’ surface is covered by iron oxide, but it’s still very active,” says Meng — and that’s surprising.

It means that the oxidized iron still contributes to PFOS removal.

The unexpected findings made the study popular with other researchers, Meng says.

Although published recently, the paper has already been viewed over 1000 times.

Meng and Ji are planning to investigate this phenomenon further. “Now we need to do more research to find out why,” Meng says. “Because this is important for the development of large-scale removal technologies.”

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/05/250527180920.htm

The 2025 hurricane season officially begins on June 1, and it’s forecast to be more active than ever, with potentially devastating storms whose heavy rainfall and powerful storm surges cause dangerous coastal flooding.

Extreme water levels — like the 15 feet of flooding Floridians saw during Hurricane Helene in 2024 — threaten lives, wash away homes, and damage ecosystems. But they can be difficult to predict without complex, data-intensive computer models that areas with limited resources can’t support.

A recent study published in Water Resources Research by civil and environmental engineering graduate student Samuel Daramola, along with faculty advisor David F. Muñoz and collaborators Siddharth Saksena, Jennifer Irish, and Paul Muñoz from Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, introduces a new deep learning framework to predict the rise and fall of water levels during storms — even in places where tide gauges fail or data is scarce — through a technique known as “transfer learning.”

The framework, called Long Short-Term Memory Station Approximated Models (LSTM-SAM), offers faster and more affordable predictions that enable smarter decisions about when to evacuate, where to place emergency resources, and how to protect infrastructure when hurricanes approach. For emergency planners, local governments, and disaster response teams, it could be a game-changer — and could save lives.

Addressing the challenge of predicting floods with transfer learning

Predicting when and where extreme water levels will strike — especially during compound floods, when multiple flooding sources, like rain and storm surge, combine to intensify flooding — is crucial for protecting vulnerable communities.

However, conventional physical-based models rely on detailed information about weather patterns, ocean conditions, and local geography. Gathering and processing this data is time consuming and expensive, limiting the models’ use to areas with long-term data records and high-powered computers.

To overcome these limitations, the research team developed LSTM-SAM, a deep-learning framework that analyzes patterns from past storms to predict water level rise during future storms. What makes this model especially useful is its ability to extrapolate from one geographic area’s data to make predictions for another locale that doesn’t have a lot of its own data. By borrowing knowledge and applying it locally, it makes accurate flood prediction more widely available.

“Our goal was to create an efficient transfer learning method that leverages pre-trained deep learning models,” said Daramola. “This is key to quickly assessing many flood-prone areas after a hurricane.”

Testing with coastal flood predictions

The researchers tested LSTM-SAM at tide gauge stations along the Atlantic coast of the United States, a region frequently impacted by hurricanes and other major storms. They found that the model was able to accurately predict the onset, peak, and decline of storm-driven water levels. The model was even able to reconstruct water levels for tide-gauge stations damaged by hurricanes, such as the station in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, which failed during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

Researchers plan on using the LSTM-SAM framework during the upcoming hurricane season, where they can test it as storms roll in nearly in real time. They’ve also made the code available in the GitHub repository of the CoRAL Lab, where scientists, emergency planners, and government leaders can download it for free. The program runs on a laptop in a matter of minutes and could be especially helpful for smaller towns or regions in developing countries where access to high-end computing tools or detailed environmental data is limited.

“Other studies have relied on repetitive patterns in the training data,” Daramola said. “Our approach is different. We highlight extreme changes in water levels during training, which helps the model better recognize important patterns and perform more reliably in those areas.”

As the frequency of hurricane events and their socioeconomic impact is likely to increase in the future, the need for reliable flood prediction frameworks is of paramount importance. Advanced deep learning tools like LSTM-SAM could become essential in helping coastal communities prepare for the new normal, opening the door to smarter, faster, and more accessible flood predictions associated with tropical cyclones.

Original study: DOI 10.1029/2024WR039054

This research was made possible by support from the National Science Foundation, CAS-Climate Program, and the Virginia Sea Grant Fellowship.

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/06/250602154901.htm

Denitrification in tiny anoxic pockets on sand grains could account for up to one-third of total nitrogen loss in silicate shelf sands.

Some microbes living on sand grains use up all the oxygen around them.

Their neighbors, left without oxygen, make the best of it: They use nitrate in the surrounding water for denitrification — a process hardly possible when oxygen is present.

This denitrification in sandy sediments in well-oxygenated waters can substantially contribute to nitrogen loss in the oceans.

TO THE POINT:

• Tiny environments: Microorganisms on sand grains create anoxic microenvironments.
• Big impact: This allows their neighbours to carry out anaerobic denitrification in well-oxygenated sands.
• Globally relevant: Overall, this reduces nitrogen in oceans, within well-oxygenated sands, worldwide for up to one third.

Human activities, such as agriculture, have dramatically increased nitrogen inputs into coastal seas.

Microorganisms remove much of this human-derived nitrogen in coastal sands through a process called denitrification.

Denitrification generally only occurs in the absence of oxygen.

However, observations indicate that it also happens in oxygenated sands, via a thus far unknown mechanism.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, now reveal how this happens: Bunches of microbes, unevenly distributed on the surface of sand grains, use up all the oxygen around them, thus creating anoxic microenvironments in which other microbes can carry out denitrification.

The results are now published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Big effects of tiny structures

The scientists used a method called microfluidic imaging, which allowed them to visualize the diverse and uneven distribution of microbes and the oxygen dynamics on extremely small scales.

“Tens of thousands of microorganisms live on a single grain of sand. We were able to distinguish oxygen-consuming and oxygen-producing microbial colonies located within micrometers of each other,” explains Farooq Moin Jalaluddin from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology.

The scientists could show that some microbes consume more oxygen than is resupplied by the surrounding pore water.

Thus, anoxic pockets develop on the surface of the sand grains.

These have so far been invisible to conventional techniques.

However, their effects are dramatic: “Our estimates based on model simulations show that anaerobic denitrification in these anoxic pockets can account for up to one third of the total denitrification in oxygenated sands,” says Jalaluddin.

Global important as a sink of anthropogenic nitrogen

Permeable sands roughly cover half of the continental shelves on our planet, making them a very important habitat in many respects. The Max-Planck-scientists thus also calculated how relevant this newly researched form of nitrogen removal in the tiny anoxic pockets on single sand grains is on a global scale. “We found that these anoxic microenvironments could account for up to one third of total nitrogen loss in silicate shelf sands,” says co-author Soeren Ahmerkamp, who is now working at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde. “Consequently, this denitrification is a substantial sink for anthropogenic nitrogen entering the oceans.”

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/06/250602155328.htm

Flooding in coastal communities is happening far more often than previously thought, according to a new study from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The study also found major flaws with the widely used approach of using marine water level data to capture instances of flooding.

“Government agencies and researchers use data from tide gauges to measure water levels in coastal areas, then use that data to estimate flood frequency in the region,” says Miyuki Hino, corresponding author of a paper on the study and assistant professor of city and regional planning at UNC. “Those estimates are used both to assess how often flooding has taken place and to predict how often flooding may take place in the future. However, our study shows that this approach does not accurately capture how often flooding takes place or how long those floods last.”

“Due to sea-level rise, we’re now seeing flooding in coastal areas outside of extreme storms like hurricanes,” says Katherine Anarde, co-author of the paper and an assistant professor of coastal engineering at NC State. “There can be flooding during everyday rain showers or at high tide on sunny days. It’s important that the methodology we use to monitor and predict flooding reflects this reality, since sea-level rise means these flooding events are going to become even more common.

“Our research shows you need land-based measures of flooding to capture the burden on coastal residents, which can inform policy and planning decisions moving forward,” Anarde says.

Anarde and Hino are part of the Sunny Day Flooding Project, a research initiative focused on improving flood monitoring, broadening our understanding of coastal flooding, and identifying the most effective flood mitigation strategies.

At present, there are two widely accepted “thresholds” used to infer flooding on land based on tide gauge data: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) High Tide Flooding threshold (HTF) and the National Weather Service’s minor flood threshold (NWS).

For this study, the researchers made use of data from a network of land-based sensors that their team designed to identify flooded roadways and deployed across eastern North Carolina. The researchers focused on a year of data from sensors in three communities: Beaufort, Carolina Beach and Sea Level.

During the study period, the sensors detected flooding on 26 days in Beaufort, 65 days in Carolina Beach and 128 days in Sea Level.

“These numbers were very different from what the HTF and NWS thresholds tell us based on water levels at tide gauges,” Anarde says. “In general, the thresholds drastically underestimated the number of floods. For example, when you subtract floods associated with extreme storms, we recorded flooding on 122 days in Sea Level. But if you looked at the data from the closest tidal gauge, the NWS threshold inferred that there were 31 days of flooding. And the HTF threshold inferred only nine days of flooding.

“However, the NWS threshold sometimes overestimates the number of flood days,” Anarde says. “For example, Carolina Beach had 65 days of flooding, but if you applied the NWS threshold using data from the closest tidal gauge, it inferred that there were 120 days of flooding.”

“In addition to being inaccurate in terms of how often it is flooding, our findings also show that the actual duration of the floods is longer than is captured by the HTF and NWF thresholds,” Hino says. “Essentially, the thresholds don’t adequately account for how long it takes water to drain off of land.”

“More accurate information on coastal flooding can inform where and how we invest resources in building more resilient communities,” says Anarde. “It’s hard to design an efficient solution when you don’t know the scope of the problem.”

Anarde and Hino are now working with partner communities to identify and evaluate response strategies that can mitigate the impacts of chronic flooding.

“Every community is unique, so there’s no one-size-fits-all solution,” says Hino. “But with more accurate data, we can help communities assess what response strategy is best for them, now and in the future.”

The paper, “Land-based Sensors Reveal High Frequency of Coastal Flooding,” will be published June 2 in the open-access journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment. The paper was co-authored by Ryan McCune and Thomas Thelen, Ph.D. students at NC State; Elizabeth Farquhar, a research associate at NC State; Perri Woodard, an undergraduate student at NC State; Tessa Fridell, a former undergraduate student at UNC; and Anthony Whipple, a research technician at UNC.

This work was done with support from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under grant number 2015-ST-061-ND0001-01. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the researchers and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S Department of Homeland Security. The work was also done with support from North Carolina Sea Grant under institution grant NA22OAR4170109; the National Science Foundation’s Human-Environment and Geographical Systems Program under grant BCS-2215195; NOAA’s Climate Adaptation Partnerships program and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, under grant NA23OAR4310474; NASA, under grant 80NSSC24K0504; the North Carolina Department of Transportation, under grant RP2024-56; the Gulf Research Program Early-Career Research Fellowship, under award 2000013691-2022; and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, under award 5-K01-HD112604-02. The researchers also thank their community partners in the Town of Beaufort, the Town of Carolina Beach, and the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center for their support.

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/06/250602155338.htm

Cyberattacks against water utilities across the country are becoming more frequent and more severe, the Environmental Protection Agency warned Monday as it issued an enforcement alert urging water systems to take immediate actions to protect the nation’s drinking water.

About 70% of utilities inspected by federal officials over the last year violated standards meant to prevent breaches or other intrusions, the agency said. Officials urged even small water systems to improve protections against hacks. Recent cyberattacks by groups affiliated with Russia and Iran have targeted smaller communities.

Some water systems are falling short in basic ways, the alert said, including failure to change default passwords or cut off system access to former employees. Because water utilities often rely on computer software to operate treatment plants and distribution systems, protecting information technology and process controls is crucial, the EPA said. Possible impacts of cyberattacks include interruptions to water treatment and storage; damage to pumps and valves; and alteration of chemical levels to hazardous amounts, the agency said.

“In many cases, systems are not doing what they are supposed to be doing, which is to have completed a risk assessment of their vulnerabilities that includes cybersecurity and to make sure that plan is available and informing the way they do business,” said EPA Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe.

Attempts by private groups or individuals to get into a water provider’s network and take down or deface websites aren’t new. More recently, however, attackers haven’t just gone after websites, they’ve targeted utilities’ operations instead.

Recent attacks are not just by private entities. Some recent hacks of water utilities are linked to geopolitical rivals, and could lead to the disruption of the supply of safe water to homes and businesses.

McCabe named China, Russia and Iran as the countries that are “actively seeking the capability to disable U.S. critical infrastructure, including water and wastewater.”

Late last year, an Iranian-linked group called “Cyber Av3ngers” targeted multiple organizations including a small Pennsylvania town’s water provider, forcing it to switch from a remote pump to manual operations. They were going after an Israeli-made device used by the utility in the wake of Israel’s war against Hamas.

Earlier this year, a Russian-linked “hacktivist” tried to disrupt operations at several Texas utilities.

A cyber group linked to China and known as Volt Typhoon has compromised information technology of multiple critical infrastructure systems, including drinking water, in the United States and its territories, U.S. officials said. Cybersecurity experts believe the China-aligned group is positioning itself for potential cyberattacks in the event of armed conflict or rising geopolitical tensions.

“By working behind the scenes with these hacktivist groups, now these (nation states) have plausible deniability and they can let these groups carry out destructive attacks. And that to me is a game-changer,” said Dawn Cappelli, a cybersecurity expert with the risk management firm Dragos Inc.

The world’s cyberpowers are believed to have been infiltrating rivals’ critical infrastructure for years planting malware that could be triggered to disrupt basic services.

The enforcement alert is meant to emphasize the seriousness of cyberthreats and inform utilities the EPA will continue its inspections and pursue civil or criminal penalties if they find serious problems.

“We want to make sure that we get the word out to people that ‘Hey, we are finding a lot of problems here,’ ” McCabe said.

Preventing attacks against water providers is part of the Biden administration’s broader effort to combat threats against critical infrastructure. In February, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to protect U.S. ports. Health care systems have been attacked. The White House has pushed electric utilities to increase their defenses, too. EPA Administrator Michael Regan and White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan have asked states to come up with a plan to combat cyberattacks on drinking water systems.

“Drinking water and wastewater systems are an attractive target for cyberattacks because they are a lifeline critical infrastructure sector but often lack the resources and technical capacity to adopt rigorous cybersecurity practices,” Regan and Sullivan wrote in a March 18 letter to all 50 U.S. governors.

Some of the fixes are straightforward, McCabe said. Water providers, for example, shouldn’t use default passwords. They need to develop a risk assessment plan that addresses cybersecurity and set up backup systems. The EPA says they will train water utilities that need help for free. Larger utilities usually have more resources and the expertise to defend against attacks.

“In an ideal world … we would like everybody to have a baseline level of cybersecurity and be able to confirm that they have that,” said Alan Roberson, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators. “But that’s a long ways away.”

Some barriers are foundational. The water sector is highly fragmented. There are roughly 50,000 community water providers, most of which serve small towns. Modest staffing and anemic budgets in many places make it hard enough to maintain the basics — providing clean water and keeping up with the latest regulations.

“Certainly, cybersecurity is part of that, but that’s never been their primary expertise. So, now you’re asking a water utility to develop this whole new sort of department” to handle cyberthreats, said Amy Hardberger, a water expert at Texas Tech University.

The EPA has faced setbacks. States periodically review the performance of water providers. In March 2023, the EPA instructed states to add cybersecurity evaluations to those reviews. If they found problems, the state was supposed to force improvements.

But Missouri, Arkansas and Iowa, joined by the American Water Works Association and another water industry group, challenged the instructions in court on the grounds that EPA didn’t have the authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act. After a court setback, the EPA withdrew its requirements but urged states to take voluntary actions anyway.

The Safe Drinking Water Act requires certain water providers to develop plans for some threats and certify they’ve done so. But its power is limited.

“There’s just no authority for (cybersecurity) in the law,” said Roberson.

Kevin Morley, manager of federal relations with the American Water Works Association, said some water utilities have components that are connected to the internet — a common, but significant vulnerability. Overhauling those systems can be a significant and costly job. And without substantial federal funding, water systems struggle to find resources.

The industry group has published guidance for utilities and advocates for establishing a new organization of cybersecurity and water experts that would develop new policies and enforce them, in partnership with the EPA.

“Let’s bring everybody along in a reasonable manner,” Morley said, adding that small and large utilities have different needs and resources.

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A boil water advisory was issued Wednesday night for the entire District of Columbia and neighboring Arlington County due to a spike in algae blooms in the Potomac River, officials said.

The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority said the advisory, which it described as “precautionary,” also included the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetery and Reagan National Airport.

“We have no information that the water was contaminated by this incident, but we issue this advisory as a precaution while we test the water,” the agency said.

The Washington Aqueduct is sourced by the Potomac River and serves as the public water supply for about one million people in the D.C. area, Arlington County and other portions of Northern Virginia.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in a news release that the advisory stemmed from “elevated turbidity levels in the water supply caused by increases in algae blooms in the Potomac River.”

Turbidity is a measure of the clarity and cloudiness of water.  

“Customers may notice their water looks cloudy or hazy,” Arlington County said in a news release.

The Washington Aqueduct has two water treatment plants. The Army Corps of Engineers responded to the elevated turbidity by temporarily transferring all water treatment operations from the Dalecarlia plant to the McMillan plant, DC Water said.

The Environmental Protection Agency also authorized adding additional copper sulfate and sodium permanganate to the aqueduct’s reservoirs to combat the algae, the Army Corps of Engineers said.

Residents were advised to bring drinking water to a rolling boil for one minute before letting it cool. Water should then be stored in a covered container.

The advisory will remain in effect until further testing deems the water safe to drink. 

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CBS Evening News

Residents say jet fuel leak in Pennsylvania went undetected for months, poisoned their drinking water

By Jim Axelrod

May 14, 2025 / 8:13 PM EDT / CBS News

When Kristine Wojnovich and her husband bought their home 20 years ago in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, it was everything they wanted — until one day in 2023, when she turned on her kitchen faucet.

“It tasted weird and smelled like oil,” Wojnovich said. “It was very disconcerting.”

Wojnovich called Sunoco Pipeline, operator of the Twin Oaks pipeline that runs just across their street. It carries jet fuel underground from a fuel terminal outside Philadelphia to Newark Terminal near the airport.

Sunoco tested her water, but she says they didn’t find anything.

“[They said], ‘We’re so happy to tell you, there’s no oil, no gas, no propane, nothing in your water,'” Wojnovich said.

When she pressed further about the cause, Wojnovich said Sunoco Pipeline told her they didn’t know, but it could be “some kind of bacteria” unrelated to the pipeline.

But other neighbors made similar complaints. Finally, 16 months after Wojnovich made her first call — and only after the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection investigated — Sunoco found a leak in the pipeline.

“I feel like we’re being poisoned every day,” Wojnovich said.

People in the community don’t use water piped in from a reservoir far away. Instead, they use wells that draw from underground aquifers for their cooking and drinking water.

When their well was finally opened earlier this year, Wojnovich was shocked at the amount of jet fuel on top of it.

“It was 15 gallons…and it’s been gathering there since September 2023,” Wojnovich said.

Sunoco removed that fuel, but Wojnovich says Sunoco still sends workers each day to skim off new fuel seeping into her well.

She’s not alone. The number of wells impacted has risen to at least 38, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

In 2024, Sunoco Pipeline spilled more fuel than any other pipeline in the United States, according to data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

“A pipeline company that’s more aggressive in follow-up, would have identified it sooner,” said Robert Hall, who spent decades regulating pipeline safety for the federal government. “They are not one of the best pipeline companies with regard to their management of their pipeline.”

In a statement, Sunoco’s partner company Energy Transfer said it has installed “advanced water filtration systems at no cost” and is “committed to the cleanup and restoration of the…neighborhood,” but did not address why it took so long to find the leak.

As for Wojnovich, she is suing Sunoco Pipeline. With the pipeline back in operation, she doesn’t plan to stick around the neighborhood.

“Would you stay if there was 12 feet of jet fuel found on your well?” Wojnovich said. “We feel unsafe.”

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