When Harford County Public Schools in Maryland reopen on September 3, a health threat will overshadow the usual excitement of the first day back.
Concerning levels of the toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS have been found in the drinking water at 10 schools, following testing by Maryland officials. Last week, reports revealed particularly high levels of PFAS contamination at Fallston High School and Harford Technical High School, with the Maryland Department of the Environment strongly recommending that the water not be consumed.
The findings are alarming because it means students and school employees have been exposed without their knowledge, likely for years.
Water tested at the 10 schools had PFAS contamination levels exceeding 4 parts per trillion, or ppt, the new limits for PFOA or PFOS – two of the most notorious PFAS – that the Environmental Protection Agency finalized in April.
In one sample at Fallston High School, PFOS contamination alone was 25 times the EPA limit.
Table of school water samples and PFAS detections (in parts per trillion)
School
Water sample
PFHxS
PFNA
PFOA
PFOS
Total PFAS
Fallston High School
Sample 1
129
27.8
16.9
100
273.7
Sample 2
19
16.2
4.52
58.5
98.22
Hartford Academy
Sample 1
45
26
77.3
31.5
179.8
Sample 2
25.6
33.8
17.2
76.6
Prospect Mill Elementary School
Sample 1
11.4
36.9
7.93
56.23
Sample 2
12.3
7.19
19.49
Norrisville Elementary School
Sample 1
52.8
52.8
Hartford Technical High School
Sample 1
26.7
5.51
32.21
Sample 2
19.9
19.9
Dublin Elementary School
Sample 1
9.02
7.12
16.14
Sample 2
5.33
6.56
11.89
Churchville Elementary School
Sample 1
6.48
4.93
11.41
Forest Hill Elementary School
Sample 1
7.66
7.66
Sample 2
7.05
7.05
Fallston Middle School
Sample 1
6.27
6.27
Jarrettsville Elementary School
Sample 1
4.48
4.48
Understanding new EPA PFAS limits
These detected PFAS levels far exceed the strict new limits set by the EPA for six PFAS – PFOA, PFOS, GenX, PFBS, PFNA and PFHxS. These maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs, are among the toughest health protections against PFAS in the world.
The new MCLs allow just 4 ppt for PFOA and PFOS, and a hazard index to address the combined risks of the four other PFAS. The low limits reflect the agency’s recognition that these chemicals are hazardous even at extremely low levels, reinforcing the urgency of tackling widespread PFAS drinking water contamination.
It’s crucial to note that the EPA has also set a maximum contaminant level goal of zero for PFOA and PFOS due to their serious cancer risks. This goal represents the level at which the EPA believes no adverse health effects, including cancer, would occur.
Similarly, for other toxic PFAS like GenX, PFNA and PFHxS, the goals are set at 10 ppt, reflecting the substantial health risks associated with even low-level exposure.
How PFAS harm health
For decades, 3M and DuPont hid the health harms of PFAS from regulators, workers and neighboring communities.
They are known as forever chemicals because once released into the environment, they do not break down, and they can build up in the body. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has detected PFAS in the blood of 99 percent of Americans, including newborn babies.
PFAS pollution affects more than 130 million Americans, with government data confirming the chemicals have tainted the water supply at 7,457 locations across the U.S.
What Harford County schools are doing to protect students
Harford County Public Schools will provide bottled water at the five most affected schools and urge students and staff to bring their own refillable bottles. Water fountains will be replaced with dispensers, and clear signs will remind everyone not to drink from the sinks.
The school district has said that resolving the PFAS problem will be time-consuming and expensive.
PFAS contamination of schools’ drinking water is not limited to Maryland.
In 2020, EWG found suspected industrial sources of PFAS were located within a mile of 27 schools or childcare facilities with their own water systems. This issue affected schools and childcare centers in 18 states, including Michigan, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The facilities were situated within 5,000 feet of known or suspected PFAS manufacturers.
Advice for parents concerned about PFAS exposure from school water
If you’re worried your child might have been exposed to high levels of PFAS from school water, there are steps to take to minimize exposure and protect your family’s health.
Consult your pediatrician about potential health screenings or tests that can identify the impact of PFAS exposure.
In addition, consider a home filtration system that is certified to remove PFAS, as this can help reduce further exposure. EWG researchers tested the performance of 10 popular water filters to evaluate how well each reduced PFAS levels detected in home tap water.
And stay informed and engaged with local health officials and school updates to ensure you’re taking all necessary precautions.
Surrounded by his seven dogs, Pedro Andino sits on his dock in the Paraná delta and watches the river. Behind him, his red-stained house peeks through the wilderness, and a small fire fans away the mosquitoes.
The 80-year-old was born on this land but, for more than a decade, has been battling to stay. While islanders see the delta as the Earth’s fourth lung, real estate developers regard it as an opportunity – and Andino says local people and animals are being pushed out.
“The islands are being taken by force, and our people are being thrown away,” he says. “Little by little, they have pitted the islanders against each other.”
Developers from nearby Buenos Aires advertise the delta as the “Miami of the South”, filling it with weekend retreats, luxury homes, and gated communities. The land – one of the world’s largest river deltas, extending more than 17,500 sq km – has been carved up to create private beaches, spas and helipads.
Andino claims that, in the past 15 years, his father’s home has burned down, and most of his neighbours’ houses destroyed. He, too, says he has resisted multiple threats designed to make him leave.
“In 50 years, it has completely changed, even the shape of our rivers, without any consultation. Our delta, as it was, does not exist any more,” says Andino, raising his voice above the rumble of a nearby jetski. “Every year is a bit worse.”
The Paraná delta is a reservoir of wildlife; the islands are thick with twisting flora, white-necked herons, giant wood rails and pinnated bittern fly overhead, and water hyacinths tangle in the crisscrossed rivers. The wetlands also serve a vital environmental purpose: they regulate the climate, store water and act as a carbon sink.
However, scientists warn that overdevelopment of this land has had a cataclysmic impact.
Industrial waste and agricultural runoff have polluted the water, and rampant deforestation has disrupted the humidity, reducing the water flowing through its streams. Fires caused almost entirely by humans rage out of control each year and have burned 1,235,000 hectares (3,051,751 acres) since 2020 according to Greenpeace.
In recent years, much of the land has been replaced by livestock pasture and the commercial afforestation of willows and poplars, which is altering the wetland ecosystems, according to Rubén Dario Quintana, a principal investigator at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council. Pesticides are killing the bees, he adds.
Juan Carlos García, 70, is an islander and descendant of the Indigenous Guaraní people. He describes his people as “part of the delta’s nature” but says they have been abandoned.
“We are the fourth lung of the world. Our delta gives oxygen to the planet, but today, they are damaging it terribly,” says García. “A lot of chemicals run into the water from plantations, affecting our health. The fauna is changing, and the fish are dying – animals that used to exist here no longer do.”
The Paraná River is a migratory corridor for birds that use its wetlands as feeding areas and the home of animals like the capybara and the gato montés. “Because the land has changed so much, the animals cannot get in or out of the water – their highways have been cut,” says Diego Domínguez, a 50-year-old teacher, islander and member of the Isla Esperanza Cooperative, a local group resisting forced evictions.
Building large-scale gated communities also requires dredging and bouldering, which can exacerbate the flooding of older communities nearby. “The machines have deepened the rivers, which makes the water run and leave faster. If it’s not a fire, it’s a flood,” García says, pointing to flooding underneath a warehouse on stilts belonging to the Isla Esperanza Cooperative.
Sofía Astelarra, a leading expert on the delta and professor at Buenos Aires University, says the “intense repopulation” of the islands began in 2000 and that the 12,000 population now triples each summer. About 800 hectares (1,977 acres) have been modified by gated communities, she says.
As the wealthy have moved in, utilities such as electricity have been installed – but some islanders say they have been blocked from accessing these.
Domínguez points to some nearby electricity lines, which serve a gated community, and which hang over the cooperative’s communal land – its second site after its first warehouse burned down. He says his group and fellow islanders have asked for years to be connected to its grid, but their requests have been refused. “It’s unequal here. There is infrastructure like electricity for the rich but not for us,” he says.
According to Quintana, the islanders cannot access communal areas for their daily activities, such as fishing and hunting.
This ordeal has been experienced by Miguel Galloro, 55, another islander whose house was destroyed. “They wanted to pay me for my house, but I didn’t want to sell.”
He has rebuilt his home but now struggles to earn a living. “I was a fisher all my life,” Galloro says. “But I’m not allowed to fish any more. They won’t give me a permit. They took away my boat and nets. It’s very hard to get work here now.”
“We used to live on the vegetation, but now, if we want to eat fish, we have to go to the store,” says García.
Many of the islanders who have left have ended up living on the impoverished outskirts of nearby urban areas, according to Quintana.
“Their objective is to empty the land of its people so wealthy people can come and make money. It’s to push you in a corner until you leave,” says Domínguez. “It is a constant battle.”
Representatives for the developers could not be reached for comment in response to these allegations. However, in one of the key disputes in the region, known as the Colony Park project, developers were ordered by a court to stop work due to environmental and aggravated damage. At the time of the judgement, a spokesperson defended the project’s actions by arguing they were improving the quality of life in the delta.
The law would require real estate projects to comply with sustainability regulations, but it has stalled in Congress, having failed to gain sufficient bipartisan support amid lobbying from industry and provincial governments.
“The deterioration to which Argentina’s wetlands are subjected year after year is the result of the fact that there is no law at the national level to protect them,” says Leonel Mingo, coordinator of the wetlands campaign at Greenpeace Argentina.
Ana Di Pangracio, a lawyer and biodiversity director at the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation, says Argentina lacks the desire to protect its wetlands. “Environmental regulation depends on the government’s political will at the moment – it shouldn’t,” she says.
“This government will be difficult – we risk facing a regression in environmental protection, like the law on forests and the glaciers,” says Di Pangracio. “And the wetlands law has strong lobbyists against it – real estate, agriculture, mining.”
Part of the problem is that wetlands are not valued by society, says Gastón Fulquet, a programme manager at Wetlands International. “The real estate sector misunderstands them as marginal lands which can be used as something more useful,” he says.
Members of the cooperative say the islanders cannot match the money the real estate companies have to fight. “The economic powers in Argentina are stronger than the law every time,” says Domínguez. “We have no political representatives, which makes it very difficult for island people to have autonomy. We have been abandoned.”
“They take advantage of us because we are vulnerable,” says García. “It is our duty to protect this land. The delta must be the land of the people.”
There’s a flaw in the plan. It’s not a small one: it is an Earth-sized hole in our calculations. To keep pace with the global demand for food, crop production needs to grow by at least 50% by 2050. In principle, if nothing else changes, this is feasible, thanks mostly to improvements in crop breeding and farming techniques. But everything else is going to change.
Even if we set aside all other issues – heat impacts, soil degradation, epidemic plant diseases accelerated by the loss of genetic diversity – there is one which, without help from any other cause, could prevent the world’s people from being fed. Water.
A paper published in 2017 estimated that to match crop production to expected demand, water use for irrigation would have to increase by 146% by the middle of this century. One minor problem. Water is already maxed out.
In general, the dry parts of the world are becoming drier, partly through reduced rainfall; partly through declining river flow as mountain ice and snow retreats; and partly through rising temperatures causing increased evaporation and increased transpiration by plants. Many of the world’s major growing regions are now threatened by “flash droughts”, in which hot and dry weather sucks moisture from the soil at frightening speed. Some places, such as the southwest of the US, now in its 24th year of drought, may have switched permanently to a drier state. Rivers fail to reach the sea, lakes and aquifers are shrinking, species living in freshwater are becoming extinct at roughly five times the rate of species that live on land and major cities are threatened by extreme water stress.
Already, agriculture accounts for 90% of the world’s freshwater use. We have pumped so much out of the ground that we’ve changed the Earth’s spin. The water required to meet growing food demand simply does not exist.
That 2017 paper should have sent everyone scrambling. But as usual, it was ignored by policymakers and the media. Only when the problem arrives in Europe do we acknowledge that there’s a crisis. But while there is understandable panic about the drought in Catalonia and Andalusia, there’s an almost total failure among powerful interests to acknowledge that this is just one instance of a global problem, a problem that should feature at the top of the political agenda.
Though drought measures have triggered protests in Spain, this is far from the most dangerous flashpoint. The catchment of the Indus river is shared by three nuclear powers – India, Pakistan and China – and several highly unstable and divided regions already afflicted by hunger and extreme poverty. Today, 95% of the river’s dry season flow is extracted, mostly for irrigation. But water demand in both Pakistan and India is growing rapidly. Supply – temporarily boosted by the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush – will, before long, peak and then go into decline.
Even under the most optimistic climate scenario, runoff from Asian glaciers is expected to peak before mid-century, and glacier mass will shrink by about 46% by 2100. Some analysts see water competition between India and Pakistan as a major cause of the repeated conflicts in Kashmir. But unless a new Indus waters treaty is struck, taking falling supplies into account, this fighting could be a mere prelude for something much worse.
There’s a widespread belief that these problems can be solved simply by enhancing the efficiency of irrigation: huge amounts of water are wasted in agriculture. So let me introduce you to the irrigation efficiency paradox. As better techniques ensure that less water is required to grow a given volume of crops, irrigation becomes cheaper. As a result, it attracts more investment, encourages farmers to grow thirstier, more profitable plants, and expands across a wider area. This is what happened, for instance, in the Guadiana river basin in Spain, where a €600m investment to reduce water use by improving the efficiency of irrigation has instead increased it.
You can overcome the paradox through regulation: laws to limit both total and individual water consumption. But governments prefer to rely on technology alone. Without political and economic measures, it doesn’t work.
Nor are other technofixes likely to solve the problem. Governments are planning massive engineering schemes to pipe water from one place to another. But climate breakdown and rising demand ensure that many of the donor regions are also likely to run dry. Water from desalination plants typically costs five or 10 times as much as water from the ground or the sky, while the process requires masses of energy and generates great volumes of toxic brine.
Above all, we need to change our diets. Those of us with dietary choice (in other words, the richer half of the world’s population) should seek to minimise the water footprint of our food. With apologies for harping on about it, this is yet another reason to switch to an animal-free diet, which reduces both total crop demand and, in most cases, water use. The water demand of certain plant products, especially almonds and pistachios in California, has become a major theme in the culture wars, as rightwing influencers attack plant-based diets. But, excessive as the watering of these crops is, more than twice as much irrigation water is used in California to grow forage plants to feed livestock, especially dairy cows. Dairy milk has much higher water demand even than the worst alternative (almond milk), and is astronomically higher than the best alternatives, such as oat or soya milk.
This is not to give all plant products a free pass: horticulture can make massive demands on water supplies. Even within a plant-based diet, we should be switching from some grains, vegetables and fruit to others. Governments and retailers should help us through a combination of stronger rules and informative labelling.
Instead, they do the opposite. Last month, at the behest of the EU’s agricultural commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski, the European Commission deleted from its new climate plan the call to incentivise “diversified” (animal-free) protein sources. Regulatory capture is never stronger than in the food and farming sector.
I hate to pile yet more on to you, but some of us have to try to counter the endless bias against relevance in politics and most of the media. This is yet another of those massive neglected issues, any one of which could be fatal to peace and prosperity on a habitable planet. Somehow, we need to recover our focus.
For nearly three decades, Jeff Broberg couldn’t drink water from his tap.
He lives on a sprawling, 170-acre grain and legume farm in Winona county, a rural part of south-east Minnesota saturated with animal agriculture. Like most properties in the area, Broberg’s has a well connected to his faucet. On a whim, when Broberg first moved in in 1986, the now 69-year-old retired geologist started testing his water for nitrate – an invisible, odorless and tasteless compound found in animal manure and commercial fertilizer. Consuming it in high quantities has been linked to a variety of health risks.
Initially, his at-home tests showed that his water was safe to drink, but after four years, testing showed that his well water had reached a contamination level at the threshold of federal safety limits.
Unable to safely drink the water from his tap, Broberg started transporting eight empty jugs every week to a friend’s property in Saint Charles, Minnesota, to fill them with clean water. He eventually tired of this and bought a reverse osmosis filtration system that would clean his well water at home. For now, it’s effective at filtering out the nitrate – but it’s not a permanent or entirely effective solution.
The culprit, experts say, is the proliferation of animal agriculture.
Megafarms in the US produce more than 100bn pounds of meat that fill supermarket aisles in the US and abroad. But they also produce 940bn pounds of manure annually – twice as much sewage as produced by the human population. The people who live in the shadow of these industrial operations say their health and quality of life are increasingly at risk.
Broberg’s experience of water contamination is common in this part of Minnesota, where more than 90,000 people rely on private wells as their primary source for drinking water. In some townships, over 40% of wells exceeded the federal health standard for nitrate – most of which is caused by animal agriculture. Broberg’s own farm is just down the street from a hog farm that has rapidly expanded over time, so that it now has more than 3,000 animals.
According to the Minnesota pollution control agency, nearly 70% of the state’s water pollution comes from crop and livestock production. In Broberg’s region of the state, pollution control officers estimate that 89% of water contamination comes from commercial fertilizer and manure that’s been spread on cropland. Unlike municipal water systems, which are tested regularly, private well owners are entirely responsible for the quality of their water.
This is a public health emergency
Jeff Broberg of Winona county, Minnesota
Various regulations and initiatives have been implemented over the years to address the issue, but as industrial agriculture continues to grow, many residents are demanding more urgent action. Late last year, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) formally notified the state of Minnesota that it must address nitrate contamination in drinking water in the region where Broberg lives.
For Broberg and many other Minnesotans, it’s a long-awaited action.
“This is a public health emergency,” he said.
It’s not just Minnesota; well water contamination from animal agriculture pollution is a problem across the US midwest. In Wisconsin, a state where 25% of people get their drinking water from private wells, an estimated 80,000 wells contain unsafe levels of nitrate. In Iowa, more than 6,000 wells had nitrate levels above the federal safe limit, and one of the leading contributors to this water contamination is agricultural pollution.
The region is home to thousands of large-scale industrial livestock operations – known as concentrated animal feeding operations (Cafos) – which produce enormous amounts of animal waste that can then seep into the groundwater or spill into nearby waterways. Pollution can also come from slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.
In January, the EPA proposed regulations that would require pollution reductions from half of American slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, both of which are leading water polluters for nitrogen and phosphorus.
While the regulations would significantly reduce pollution from the largest plants, they would also ignore many meat processing plants that pollute municipal sewage treatments. Many environmental groups are calling for more restrictions. (The EPA is also now the subject of a lawsuit that claims the regulatory body hasn’t done enough under the Clean Water Act to protect waterways and drinking water from pollution from livestock farming.)
“We hear this all the time – ‘Well, we’re gonna have to feed this growing population in the world.’ And they never finish the sentence by saying ‘We’re going to have to pollute our groundwater to do it.’ I mean, that would be real,” Broberg said.
Nancy Utesch, 59, a farmer in Kewaunee county, Wisconsin, has seen this first-hand. Many farms use manure as fertilizer on nearby crop fields, but overapplication can lead to pollution. Last April, she woke to the sounds of tractors spreading manure on a 30-acre property next to her farm. The parcel of land is home to two wetlands, which Utesch was worried would be contaminated if the spreading continued. She contacted Wisconsin’s department of natural resources (WDNR) twice during the day to express her concern.
A departmental warden inspected the land from the road, but did not observe any violations that would warrant him access to the property.
At one point, Utesch considered driving her car in front of the tractor to stop them from spreading the manure. As she lay in bed that night, she could still see the tractor lights shining through her window. Later testing by the WDNR revealed one of the wetlands had indeed been contaminated with manure.
Being under that burden all the time questioning whether your water is OK to drink – it really is very stressful,
Nancy Utesch of Kewaunee county, Wisconsin
In Kewaunee county, an area sometimes referred to as “Cafo Alley” because there are nearly five times as many cows as humans living there, manure spreading is not out of the ordinary. During manure application season, large machinery roams the seemingly endless fields spreading manure, making it almost impossible to avoid the smell of animal waste.
A 2021 USDA study found that the biggest contributor for acute gastrointestinal illness from Kewaunee county’s private drinking water wells is cow manure. Though the water from Utesch’s well is currently safe to drink, she fears things will only get worse without change.
“Being under that burden all the time questioning whether your water is OK to drink – it really is very stressful,” she said.
A national study found that nitrate-contaminated water could be responsible for up to 12,000 cases of cancer each year and $1.5bn in annual healthcare costs. This type of pollution can also cause methemoglobinemia, a condition in infants known as blue-baby syndrome, and other adverse pregnancy outcomes. While nitrate is one of the most well-researched water contaminants related to agriculture, other chemicals that aren’t being tested for are also probably found in polluted water, says Aleta Borrud, a retired physician who worked at the Mayo Clinic and a clean water advocate. “We’re putting stuff on our land that’s meant to kill biological organisms – why do we think that’s not going to have some impact on us?” she said.
Bonnie Haugen, 65, runs a small-scale dairy farm with her husband, Vance, in Canton, Minnesota. When they first bought the farm in 2011, there were at least a dozen family dairy farms within a three-mile radius of their property. Today, they are the only ones left.
We all want to have and should have access to good quality air, water and a way to live
Bonnie Haugen of Canton, Minnesota
“We forget sometimes that we’re all people. We have differences, but we have some very basic commonalities, such as we all want to have and should have access to good quality air, water and a way to live,” she said.
As of 2022 – the last time she tested the water from her well – the nitrate level sat at 8.99 mg/l, just below federal safe levels. (Some studies have shown greater health risks, including digestive system cancers, even at levels technically deemed safe.)
“It’s just sad and debilitating, because we don’t know what we don’t know,” Haugen said.
But new regulations won’t come easily. In many states, the agriculture industry is incredibly influential. In Wisconsin, the dairy industry filed a lawsuit seeking to undermine the state’s only protection for regulating Cafo waste. Last year, county commissioners in Fillmore county, Minnesota, doubled the amount of animal units a feedlot can have from 2,000 to 4,000. It’s difficult to challenge the industry that contributes so much economically, says David Cwiertny, director of the Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination at the University of Iowa.
“Critics will be quick to say, ‘Why are you against farmers?’” Cwiertny said. “We need to be able to talk about it in a way where we can understand sources of pollution, impacted communities, and figure out a solution.”
In the face of the industry’s strength, many residents are starting to organize around the issue of clean water so they can fight back. In 2018, Broberg, along with a retired hydrologist named Paul Wotzka, started the Minnesota Well Owners Organization to educate and provide support to private well owners in south-east Minnesota.
The group regularly runs free water testing clinics, so that well owners can bring a sample from their tap to have it tested for nitrate and bacteria contamination.
As people await their results, the mood is anything but light. Residents quietly chat with one another, fretting over the possibility that their water is unsafe to drink. Some come to get their water tested because they have grandchildren in the house, others because they have health issues and wonder if they are linked to the water they are drinking.
Broberg says that to fix the problem, it needs to be framed not as a matter of conservation, but as an urgent public health issue.
But in a part of the country that’s fiercely proud of its agricultural roots, it’s not always easy. The founders of the Minnesota Well Owners Organization, along with other clean-water advocates in the midwest, hope that raising this issue will bring people together. Because everyone – residents, farmers and feedlot owners – is drinking from the same water source. Everyone wants clean drinking water, Broberg says.
“We’ve found that really strikes a great chord with people.”
RABAT, Morocco (AP) — For years, Fatima Mhattar has welcomed shopkeepers, students, bankers and retirees to Hammam El Majd, a public bath on the outskirts of Morocco’s capital, Rabat. For a handful of change, they relax in a haze of steam then are scrubbed down and rinsed off alongside their friends and neighbors.
The public baths — hammams in Arabic — for centuries have been fixtures of Moroccan life. Inside their domed chambers, men and women, regardless of social class, commune together and unwind. Bathers sit on stone slabs under mosaic tiles, lather with traditional black soap and wash with scalding water from plastic buckets.
But they’ve become the latest casualty as Morocco faces unprecedented threats from climate change and a six-year drought that officials have called disastrous. Cities throughout the North African nation have mandated that hammams close three days a week this year to save water.
Mhattar smiled as she greeted families lugging 10-liter (2.6-gallon) buckets full of towels, sandals and other bath supplies to the hammam where she works as a receptionist on a recent Sunday. But she worried about how restrictions would limit customer volume and cut into her pay.
“Even when it’s open Thursday to Sunday, most of the clients avoid coming because they are afraid it’s full of people,” Mhattar said.
Little rainfall and hotter temperatures have shrunk Morocco’s largest reservoirs, frightening farmers and municipalities that rely on their water. The country is making painful choices while reckoning with climate change and drought.
The decision to place restrictions on businesses including hammams and car washes has angered some. A chorus of hammam-goers and politicians are suggesting the government is picking winners and losers by choosing not to ration water at more upmarket hotels, pools, spas or in the country’s agricultural sector, which consumes the majority of Morocco’s water.
“This measure does not seem to be of great benefit, especially since the (hammam) sector is not considered one of the sectors that consumes the most water,” Fatima Zahra Bata, a member of Morocco’s House of Representatives, asked Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit in written questions last month.
Bata asked why officials in many municipalities had carved out exceptions for spas, which are typically used by wealthier people and tourists. She warned that hammam closures would “increase the fragility and suffering of this class, whose monthly income does not exceed 2,000 or 3,000 dirhams at best.” Hammam workers make an amount equivalent to $200 to $300.
Laftit has not yet responded, and his office did not respond to questions from The Associated Press.
The closures affect the roughly 200,000 people directly or indirectly employed in the hammam sector, which accounts for roughly 2% of the country’s total water consumption, according to Morocco’s national statistics agency.
Hammams have been closed in cities including Casablanca, Tangier and Beni Mellal since the interior minister, asked local officials to enact water-saving measures earlier this year. With the price of heating gas high and temperatures dropping, the closures have raised particular concern in towns high in the Atlas Mountains where people go to hammams to warm up.
Mustapha Baradine, a carpenter in Rabat, likes to enjoy hammams with his family weekly and doesn’t understand how the modest amount of water he uses is consequential in a drought. For him, the closures have fostered resentment and raised questions about wealth, poverty and political power.
“I use only two buckets of water for me and my children,” he said. “I did not like this decision at all. It would be better if they would empty their pools,” he said of local officials.
Morocco has reduced the prevalence of poverty in recent years, but income inequality continues to plague both rural and urban areas. Despite rapid economic development in certain sectors, protests have historically arisen among working class people over disparities and rising costs of living.
Morocco’s neighbors have chosen to ration water in varying ways. In Tunisia, entire neighborhoods had their taps shut off for several hours each day last year. In part of Spain, communities were prohibited last summer from washing cars, filling swimming pools and watering gardens.
Fatima Fedouachi, the president of a hammam owners’ association in Casablanca, said the closures had changed the economics of operating a hammam. Though hammam associations have yet to publish statistics on layoffs or lost revenue, they have warned about the effect on owners, chimney technicians and receptionists.
“Owners are obligated to perform their duties for their workers,” Fedouachi said.
Even on days when they’re closed, Fedouachi said, most hammams continue burning wood to keep the baths warm rather than let them cool off and heat them again. Owners would prefer rationing for certain hours each day instead of being forced to close, she added.
Some hammam-goers say the closures appear to be raising awareness of drought, regardless of how much they save. Regulars like 37-year-old housekeeper Hanane El Moussaid support that nationwide push.
“If there’s less water, I prefer drinking over going to the hammam,” El Moussaid said.
Lake Mead’s water levels stayed high again last month amid a historic water shortage, rising again and passing January’s mark to become the highest point in nearly three years.
According to measurements taken at the end of February by the Bureau of Reclamation, Lake Mead’s water levels were reported to be 1,076.52 feet, higher than levels taken at the end of January, when they were measured at 1,072.67 feet.
Prior to this year, the most recent highest level was recorded in April 2021, when it was measured at 1079.30 feet.
The lake’s water levels remained high in the month following the heavy winds, rain and snow that moved through California in January from an atmospheric river weather event, also known as a “Pineapple Express.”
Earlier this month, a blizzard pounded Eastern California and the mountains along the Nevada border in a powerful storm that dumped heavy snow and brought howling winds with gusts that hit 190 mph.
Water levels projected to fall
Although water levels remain high for now, experts previously told Newsweek that it would depend on future storms to fill the reservoirs in Lake Mead and Lake Powell in Utah and Arizona.
The recent water levels may be the peak for Lake Mead for the foreseeable future, according to a 24-month operation plan from the Bureau of Reclamations, which estimates levels wills steadily drop over the remainder of 2024, ending 17 feet lower by December.
In 2025, the projection estimates that water levels may be at its lowest since the 1930s, when the lake was filled.
Where is Lake Mead?
Lake Mead is reservoir in Nevada and Arizona formed by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, and is the largest reservoir in the U.S. in terms of water capacity.
It was first flooded in 1935 when the Hoover Dam was created, and provides water to Arizona, California, Nevada and some of Mexico.
What were Lake Mead’s water levels in 2023?
Lake Mead’s water levels rose slowly throughout 2023, although the measurements were lower than in the previous two years. Water level measurements began at 1,046.97 feet in January and ended at 1,068.18 feet in December.
The lake has experienced record lows in water levels in recent years, with the first water shortage announced in 2021 after years of chronic overuse and drought.
Despite the recent higher water levels, Lake Mead’s launch ramp remains closed due to climate change and the 20-year ongoing drought that has “reshaped the park’s shorelines,” according to the National Park Service, which operates a recreation area on the lake.
Is the Southwest still in a drought?
Some areas of the Southwest are still in drought, although nearly all of California is no longer under that classification. Drought areas in California are in the north along the Oregon border, the east along the Nevada border and the southeast along the Arizona border.
Lake Mead, which spans across Nevada and Arizona, is currently reporting abnormally dry to moderate drought levels, according to the Drought Monitor.
Much of Arizona is classified as D0 (abnormally dry), with patches of the state in D1 (moderate drought) and D2 (severe drought), according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Almost all of New Mexico is under drought, with many areas of the state reporting D1 (moderate drought) and some areas reporting D3 (extreme drought) and D4 (exceptional drought) levels.
MEXICO CITY — María Cristina Peláez holds up a bottle of a dark brown liquid. It looks like Coca-Cola and smells like sewage. This is the water that has come from her neighbor’s tap since 2022.
It’s unusable — too dirty to wash the dishes with or even clean the toilets.
“Half the street gets this water through the tap. And half the street gets no water at all,” says Peláez, who lives on a residential street in Ecatepec, a working-class city on Mexico City’s northern edge.
Around 40 of Peláez’s neighbors crowd around, nodding in agreement. They are furious and exasperated. To make do, they pay for private companies to truck in nondrinkable water so they can do basic household chores. Peláez spends about $70 a month on the deliveries. That’s on top of the clean drinking water nearly all Mexicans have to purchase as well.
It’s a bad situation on the verge of becoming exponentially worse. Climate change and mismanagement have exacerbated the inequalities between those who have access to water and those who don’t.
The reservoirs that supply the Cutzamala water system, which furnish about 20% of the water used by the greater Mexico City area’s 22 million residents, are drying up. They have fallen to historic lows — around 38% capacity, according to the country’s water agency — due to abnormally low rainfall in recent years. The reservoirs have historically topped 70% capacity at this time of year, according to the agency.
“The water situation in Mexico City is at a very critical level, and it’s getting more severe throughout the years,” says Tamara Luengo, a water expert in Mexico City and founder of the consulting firm Aqueducto.
Authorities are warning of major water shortages across huge swaths of Mexico City until the rainy season begins in June and refills the reservoirs. As this reporter worked on the story, water stopped running in her apartment building, located in one of Mexico City’s upscale neighborhoods. In some parts of the city, water is so precious that armed guards accompany water tanks to make sure they aren’t stolen.
Local media has been brimming with stories about a possible “Day Zero” — when water would stop flowing from the Cutzamala altogether — as early as June 26.
Politicians have downplayed those concerns. Mexico City’s interim mayor, Martí Batres, said in a Feb. 20 news conference that “there is no water emergency” and attributed reports of an impending Day Zero to fearmongering by conservative political opponents.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has also dismissed worries and said officials are addressing the water shortage by drilling new wells as well as repairing equipment to extract more water from existing wells.
But the president’s remarks have hardly quelled the brewing outrage. On at least two occasions this year, protesters blocked traffic near the offices of Mexico’s National Water Commission to express outrage over inequality in water access. Wealthy Mexicans continue to fill artificial lakes for aesthetic purposes even as millions go with limited or no water access at all. Water-guzzling factories are also coming under criticism, while an unknown quantity of water is siphoned off by organized crime groups to maintain lucrative avocado orchards that have sprung up near the distant reservoirs that supply water to Mexico City.
Luengo says mismanagement and aging infrastructure play a huge role in the current crisis, noting that the city loses 40% of its water supply due to leaks in the pipes. “This unsustainable water management accentuates the severity of the water situation in the city,” Luengo says.
Climate change is compounding an already volatile situation, according to Arnoldo Matus Kramer, Mexico City’s chief resilience officer from 2014 to 2018 and now a partner at the accounting and consulting firm EY, working on its Climate Change and Sustainability Services Line.
In Ecatepec, Peláez says news reports of the impending water crisis have left her panicked. As it is, she says, she and her neighbors are hardly getting by on the water they buy. “We make do with the thousand liters we receive, but it’s not enough,” she says.
San Francisco firefighters and utility crews are responding to a water main break Friday morning in the area of Stern Grove and Pine Lake Park that is sending a geyser of water at least 20 feet into the air.
The San Francisco Fire Department tweeted about the break shortly after 10 a.m. Friday, saying firefighters were at the scene on the 1700 block of Wawona “for a possible water main break.” Maps show the block just west of the Stern Grove Recreation Area, home of the annual Stern Grove Festival that presents free concerts every summer, and near Parkside Square and Pine Lake Park
Firefighters were assessing risks to structures and residents in the area as crews from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission respond to the scene. Police units are on the scene helping block off Wawona. The public is being asked to avoid the area.
Chopper footage showed that the geyser produced by the rupture was happening right next to a home on Wawona Street. Crews appeared to be able to turn off the flow of water to the break at around 11:25 a.m., over an hour after the initial report by the fire department.
According to the SFPUC, the cause of the break appears to be the failure of an 8-inch valve connected to a 60-inch water transmission line that takes water from a treatment plant to the Sunset Reservoir on the west side of the city.
Chopper video showed mud from the water flow filling part of the field below, with the level of mud rising as high as the bottom of two benches on the grounds.
A spokesman for the SFPUC said that crews were assessing the stability of the hillside under the homes closest to the water main break. Officials said customers in the surrounding area may experience low or no water pressure.
“Initially, I walk out to my side yard and I heard a crack and a boom; loud noise,” said neighbor Andrew Trinh. “I just don’t know how much the soil will get eroded from the water washing down the hill. We may lose the street if they don’t shut it down soon.”
The water damage to the festival grounds was serious enough for the festival to cancel its final late August fundraising concert featuring Too $hort and Tower of Power. Organizers called the damage from the break “catastrophic” in a press release.
Photos and video provided by festival organizers showed the extent of the damage. Mud and water had flowed across the lawn in front of the stage as well as through the backstage area.
Festival organizers solicited donations from supporters to raise funds to repair the damage. The festival was able to open on schedule the following summer.
An hour-and-a-half from the Australian capital, drinking water has become currency.
Residents in the small town of Boorowa, north-west of Canberra, have been on a boil water notice for almost a month. Most have been buying drinking water. And, as one local discovered, it is also accepted as barter.
James Blackwell, an academic researcher, paid for second-hand goods on Facebook Marketplace with some of his water supplies.
“I joked with [the seller] and I said, ‘I can pay cash or I can pay in bottled water’,” he says. “She said she hadn’t been to the shops yet, so she took the bottled water.”
Blackwell has started bringing his own bottles to his workplace in Canberra and filling them from the free filtered water stations in the office.
“I was there with a giant Ikea-type bag with bottles of water and people were wondering what I was doing,” he says. “I’m on week three of bottled water.”
The town of 2,000 people was placed on a boil water notice on 22 January after heavy rains “compromised” filtration systems at the local water treatment plant.
But the Hilltops mayor, Margaret Roles, says water quality has been a concern in Boorowa for more than 50 years.
“It’s always been hardwater and, although it meets the minimum standard for potable water, people’s expectations are rising all the time,” she says.
The council was faced with a choice of either increasing the size of the weir near Boorowa, which Roles says would leave residents at the mercy of the “vagaries of the river”, or lobbying for a pipeline from the Murrumbidgee River, the intake point for which is more than 50km away at Jugiong.
They chose the pipeline. It already services nearby Harden. The estimated cost of extending the line another 10km, Roles says, is $60m. The New South Wales government this month announced a $825,000 grant, jointly funded by council, for a geotechnical study.
Roles says the town’s growing population, thanks to its popularity with tree-changers who left cities during the pandemic, has strengthened the business case. A new housing development is set to bring in another 120 families.
“Because Hilltops is now 20,000 people and a growing area, we have a much better case to plan for the future,” she says.
‘No one serves tap water’
At Jeremy Clarke’s wine bar, bottled water is on the menu for ice, cocktails, dishwashing and cleaning. As he hauls a four-litre jug of water on top of the bar, Clarke jokes that his biggest revenue stream is now from recycling plastic water bottles.
“The thing in bars, you’re always rinsing,” he says. “It’s a massive hassle with the salad greens, rinsing your implements before they go in the dishwasher … no hospitality place around here serves tap water.”
The town water supply comes from the Boorowa River, which flows through farmland. It doesn’t have the tell-tale discoloration or smell of unsafe water, but Sam Jansen says the taste is unforgettable.
“I remember the day we moved into Boorowa, I ran to the kitchen sink and filled it up with a glass of water. I had a sip and said, ‘Oh mum, the water’s no good,’” she says. “Mum had a try and she said, ‘Oh my God no, you can’t drink that.’ That was 20 years ago.”
The new mother has twice developed an infection since having a child by cesaerian section in January. Guidance issued by Hilltops council and a factsheet from NSW Health stated that that town water was safe for showering but Jansen disagrees.
“I’ve never had an infection with any of my births but I’ve never had such a horrendous healing process before,” she says. “I 100% attribute that to the water. It’s not because of my lack of trying, it’s because of the water.”
The state MP for Cootamundra, Steph Cooke, says the lack of safe water is “unacceptable and unfair”
“We have the right to safe and secure drinking water and we have the right to thrive and grow,” she says. “Not only are we unable to service current residents, we have even less hope under the current circumstances of supplying [water] to new residents. It’s holding back the growth and development of Boorowa.”
The federal member for Hume, Angus Taylor, says water quality in the town is a “longstanding issue” and that the current situation is “unacceptable”.
“It’s imperative these water quality issues are resolved as quickly as possible,” he says.
The NSW water minister, Rose Jackson, says there is “no quick fix” to the town’s complex water issues. But she says technical experts from her department will “work closely” with the local council until the current problem is resolved.
“Delivery of clean and reliable water to the community is a key responsibility of the local water utility but we most certainly all have a role to play and we’re doing everything we can to help them,” Jackson says.
Magdalena Coromina tapped the hard ground with her walking stick and looked up at a church that was meant to be underwater. Six decades ago, when engineers had built the reservoir in which she stood, they had flooded the town of Sant Romà de Sau and drowned its buildings. The rains that slaked the region’s thirst had kept the ruins covered.
But that world no longer exists. Struck by a drought that has dried the reservoir to 1% of its capacity, the remains of the village have come back into view. Crumbling stone structures now sit on cracked soil among ashen plants. The church, whose spire used to poke above the surface during dry spells, today stands high above the waterline.
“It makes me so sad,” said Coromina, an 85-year-old from the nearby city of Ripoll who came to see the ruins on an unusually warm February afternoon. She remembered rain and snow during winters when she was a girl. “Now? Nothing.”
Catalonia, a rich region in the north-east of Spain, is in the grip of a drought that is killing its crops, choking its economy and restricting the lives of 6 million people who live under emergency measures. Scientists do not know what role the climate crisis has played in shrinking the region’s water supply, but they say the fight to keep taps running is one that will sweep southern Europe as fossil fuel pollution heats it up and dries parts of it out.
The western coasts of the Mediterranean, in particular, will be hit by increased evaporation, shorter rainy seasons and less mountain snow cover, said Stefano Materia, a climate scientist at Barcelona Supercomputer Centre. In cities such as Valencia in Spain, Marseille in France and Genoa in Italy – where industry and tourism are already putting pressure on scarce water resources – “this will likely increase the vulnerability”.
Catalonia offers a glimpse of that future. At the start of February, after more than 1,000 days of drought, the regional government extended restrictions to cover Barcelona and other municipalities. Together with Spain’s ecology ministry, it announced plans to invest nearly half a billion euros in desalination plants to make salty water fit for the tap. Officials also want to ship drinking water from wetter parts of the country and double the aid money for emergency works on the leaky network of pipes.
But as they wait for rain to fall and infrastructure to improve, Catalans are divided on how to share the water that remains. The dilemma has pitted locals, farmers and tourists against each other as they fight over a resource that is growing more scarce by the day.
“It’s difficult to avoid these reactions, because when people suffer, they need to react somehow,” said Meritxell Serret, Catalonia’s foreign minister and former agriculture minister. “There is a lot that needs to be done – in every sector – and we are aware that we cannot demand they do that from one day to another.”
Farmers, who use one-third of the water in the internal basin where most Catalans live, face the greatest pressure to cut their consumption. The government has ordered them to use 80% less water for irrigation and 50% less water for livestock, while asking industry to cut water use by 25%.
The “injustice” of the restrictions and the effects of the drought has left farmers feeling powerless, said Albert Grassot, the president of a local irrigation community. “It’s a feeling of impotence, weakness and rage.”
Driving through his rice farm near the medieval town of Pals, Grassot said the drought weighed on his mind more than the coronavirus pandemic and the energy crisis. If no rain falls in the next three months, he said, his family will be unable to sow seeds for the first year since his great-great-grandfather started farming the land.
The effects will ripple beyond his own farm, he added. Rice paddies use lots of water because the grain grows in flooded fields. But in Pals, which is just 3km from the coast, the centuries-old practice helps stop salt water from intruding inland and wreaking havoc on other crops and ecosystems.
In Barcelona, where public fountains are dry and beachside showers have been shut off, the burden of drought is lighter than in the villages but still hangs heavy over the city. Posters in subway stations warn in stern letters that “water doesn’t fall from the sky”.
After a previous drought struck Barcelona in 2008, the city invested in recycling wastewater, desalinating seawater and persuading citizens to save more drinking water. Its efforts have increased supply and brought the city’s demand for water down to some of the lowest levels in Europe.
Alexander Ross, a geographer at Portland State University who has co-written a book on water politics in cities across the world, said Barcelona had been leading the way in many regards but that its ambitions still fell short of what was needed. “When even Barcelona is experiencing this kind of crisis – given its policies – it shows the rest of the world that it’s time to act,” he said.
Activists complain the government has been unwilling to crack down on tourists, who come for the hottest months of the year and on average use more than twice as much water as locals. Barcelona welcomed 10 million holidaymakers in 2022 – making it one of the most-visited cities in Europe – and the sector makes up 12% of the Catalan economy.
But hotels are starting to feel the heat. In the beachside party town of Lloret de Mar, a group of owners have asked the Catalan government for permission to buy a mobile desalination plant to avoid restrictions on their swimming pools. If they cannot fill them ahead of summer, they fear visitor numbers may plummet.
So far, the tourism industry has faced little pressure to invest in structural changes to save water. Showers are often the biggest users of water in a hotel and the “greywater” that goes down the drain can be easily treated if kept separate from sewage, said Gianluigi Buttiglieri, a scientist at the Catalan Institute of Water Research. But without laws to mandate this, he added, “there is no incentive for them to do so”.
The Samba, a three-star hotel in the centre of Lloret, is one of the few hotels in the Mediterranean that uses separate pipes. During renovation work 25 years ago, the management split the hotel’s pipes so it can treat greywater in a tank in the basement before piping it back to guests’ bathrooms.
The hotel is testing a separate system to filter it through stacked layers of plant-rich soil before disinfecting it. According to a study at the Samba that Buttiglieri co-authored last year, such a system would pay for itself within a decade.
Laura Pérez, a hotel manager responsible for sustainability, said that while the Samba had also been hit by restrictions on swimming pools – which under Spanish law cannot be filled with treated greywater – it was more resilient to drought than other hotels. “We are not suffering as much, because we need less water.”
A similar concept can be seen on the outskirts of Manresa, a small industrial city farther inland. Pol Huguet, a councillor responsible for the environment, has begun to rewild six hectares of land near an abandoned disco to make the area more diverse and resilient to extreme weather. But the drought has delayed the project by at least a year. The young trees have not grown tall enough for sheep to arrive without the animals eating them.
Pointing at a forest behind him, Huguet said humans have altered the landscape in ways that have made it too vulnerable to hot, dry weather. “A wildfire can advance with enormous speed if there is homogeneity – with all the trees at the same height, very dense – and that’s what we have here.”
Officials share his concerns. Wary of forests that have turned into tinder boxes, the Catalan government announced on Friday it would reinforce its fire prevention units in February, four months earlier than planned. In many parts of Catalonia, it said, the drought is raising the risk of wildfires by taking the death and decay of plant matter to levels “never seen before in extent and distribution”.
But while the effects of the drought are in many ways unprecedented, locals say the concept is one that Catalans know well.
In Manresa on Saturday, residents held a festival to celebrate the construction of a contested medieval canal called La Séquia that connected the town to the Llobregat River six centuries ago. Built after a series of famines, the canal irrigated Manresa’s crops and later moved the looms of its once-thriving textile industry.
But a local bishop who owned mills upstream fought efforts to build it and excommunicated the entire town in the 14th century, worried that diverting the water would eat into his profits. Legends say he changed his mind after taking a flash of light as a sign that God wanted the canal built.
“Water wars have happened many times in history, in many places,” said Huguet, staring at the dry vegetation in front of him. “Now it’s happening again.”
