By Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR)
The explosion of the underwater volcano Kolumbo in the Aegean Sea in 1650 triggered a destructive tsunami that was described by historical eye witnesses. A group of researchers led by Dr Jens Karstens from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel has now surveyed Kolumbo’s underwater crater with modern imaging technology and reconstructed the historical events. They found that the eyewitness accounts of the natural disaster can only be described by a combination of a landslide followed by an explosive eruption. Their findings are published today in the journal Nature Communications.
From the Greek island of Santorini, the eruption had been visible for several weeks. In the late summer of 1650, people reported that the colour of the water had changed and the water was boiling. About seven kilometres north-east of Santorini, an underwater volcano had risen from the sea and began ejecting glowing rocks. Fire and lightning could be seen, and plumes of smoke darkened the sky. Then the water suddenly receded, only to surge towards the coastline moments later, battering it with waves up to 20 metres high. A huge bang was heard more than 100 kilometres away, pumice and ash fell on the surrounding islands, and a deadly cloud of poisonous gas claimed several lives.
“We know these details of the historic eruption of Kolumbo because there are contemporary reports that were compiled and published by a French volcanologist in the 19th century,” says Dr Jens Karstens, marine geophysicist at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. But how did these devastating events come about? To find out, he and his German and Greek colleagues went to the Greek Aegean Sea in 2019 to study the volcanic crater with special technology. Karstens: “We wanted to understand how the tsunami came about at that time and why the volcano exploded so violently.”
On board the now decommissioned research vessel POSEIDON, the team used 3D seismic methods to create a three-dimensional image of the crater, which is now 18 metres below the water’s surface. Dr Gareth Crutchley, co-author of the study: “This allows us to look inside the volcano.” Not only did the 3D imaging show that the crater was 2.5 kilometres in diameter and 500 metres deep, suggesting a truly massive explosion, the seismic profiles also revealed that one flank of the cone had been severely deformed. Crutchley: “This part of the volcano has certainly slipped.” The researchers then took a detective’s approach, comparing the various mechanisms that could have caused the tsunami with the historical eyewitness accounts. They concluded that only a combination of a landslide followed by a volcanic explosion could explain the tsunami. Their findings are published today in the journal Nature Communications.
By combining 3D seismics with computer simulations, the researchers were able to reconstruct how high the waves would have been if they had been generated by the explosion alone. Karstens: “According to this, waves of six metres would have been expected at one particular location, but we know from the reports of eyewitnesses that they were 20 metres high there.” Furthermore, the sea is said to have first receded at another point, but in the computer simulation a wave crest reaches the coast first. Thus, the explosion alone cannot explain the tsunami event. However, when the landslide was included in the simulations, the data agreed with historical observations.
Jens Karstens explains: “Kolumbo consists partly of pumice with very steep slopes. It is not very stable. During the eruption, which had been going on for several weeks, lava was continuously ejected. Underneath, in the magma chamber, which contained a lot of gas, there was enormous pressure. When one of the volcano’s flanks slipped, the effect was like uncorking a bottle of champagne: the sudden release of pressure allowed the gas in the magma system to expand, resulting in a huge explosion.” Something similar could have happened during the 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga undersea volcano, whose volcanic crater has a similar shape to Kolumbo’s.
The study thus provides valuable information for the development of monitoring programmes for active submarine volcanic activity, such as SANTORY, which is led by co-author Prof. Dr Paraskevi Nomikou of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). “We hope to be able to use our results to develop new approaches to monitor volcanic unrest,” says Jens Karstens, “maybe even an early warning system, collecting data in real time. That would be my dream.”
About 3D Marine Reflection Seismics
3D seismics is a geophysical technique that exploits the fact that sound waves are partially reflected at the boundaries of layers. This makes it possible to create cross-sectional profiles of geological structures beneath the seabed. Unlike 2D reflection seismics, marine 3D reflection seismics uses multiple measuring cables (housing receivers) towed in parallel behind the research vessel. The result is a three-dimensional image, known as a seismic volume, which allows us to look beneath the seafloor and analyse the geology in detail.
Researchers have discovered a protein that seals plant roots to regulate the uptake of nutrients and water from the soil, the discovery could help develop climate proof crops that require less water and chemical fertilizers.
Researchers from the University of Nottingham identified new components of the lignin barrier in plant roots and the specific function of dirigent proteins (DPs), located in the root endodermis that control water and nutrient uptake. Their findings have been published today in Science Direct.
Plant roots function by absorbing mineral nutrients and water from the soil and also controlling their proper balance in the plant. This control is exerted by a specialised layer of root tissue called the endodermis.
The endodermis contains a barrier to the movement of solutes and water that is made of lignin, the same material present in wood. This impermeable barrier blocks the uncontrolled movement of material into the root, by forming a tight seal between cells. This seal ensures the only pathway for nutrients and water to be taken up by roots is through the cells of the endodermis. This allows full cellular control over what enters and leaves the plant via the roots.
This research has identified new components of the lignin deposition machinery that focus on the function of dirigent proteins (DPs), located in the root endodermis. These proteins act in coordination with other described root regulatory components to direct and organize the correct deposition of lignin in the endodermis allowing the plant to ensure it receives the optimum balance of nutrients from the soil.
Dr Gabriel Castrillo from the University of Nottingham’s School of Biosciences one of the leaders of the research, said: “With record temperatures being reached in parts of the world this year and erratic rainfall it is ever more important to understand the mechanisms of plants so we can future proof them to secure future food supplies. This research shows how plant roots regulate their uptake of water and nutrients through the deposition of lignin, which is regulated by DPs. Without these proteins, proper root sealing is not completed and the nutrient balance in the plant is compromised. We can use this knowledge to engineer plants to be able to grow with less water and chemical fertilizers.”
PFAS, a family of highly fluorinated substances, represent a danger for humans and the environment. Particularly problematic members of this family, such as perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) appear to cause organ damage and cancer, as well as disrupting the endocrine system. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, researchers have now introduced a new method for an economical, easy-to-use fluorescence sensor for sensitive on-site testing for PFAS in water samples.
The term per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) refers to a group of organic compounds in which most or all the hydrogen atoms bound to the carbon atoms have been replaced with fluorine atoms. They are used to provide water-, oil-, and dirt-resistance to a variety of products, such as nonstick pans, outdoor clothing, and packaging. They may also be found in fire-suppressing foam, paint, and car polish. These compounds are highly useful — and highly dangerous when they find their way into the environment: they do not break down and thus become concentrated in plants, animals, and people.
Limits of 100 ng/l for individual specific PFAS substances and 500 ng/l for the total of all PFAS were set for drinking water in the EU. In Germany, water providers must begin testing drinking water for PFAS in 2026. The US Environmental Protection Agency has set stricter limits: for the most widespread PFAS (PFOS and PFOA), the upper limit is set at 4nm/l for each substance.
The usual method used to detect such trace amounts involves chromatography and mass spectrometry, is time-consuming and expensive, and requires complex equipment and experienced personnel. Timothy M. Swager and Alberto Concellón at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, USA, have now introduced a technique for making a portable, inexpensive test that uses fluorescence measurements to easily and selectively detect PFAS in water samples.
The test is based on a polymer — in the form of a thin film or nanoparticles — with fluorinated sidechains that have fluorinated dye molecules (squaraine derivatives) embedded in them. The special polymer backbone (poly-phenylene ethynylene) absorbs violet light and transfers the light energy to the dye by an electron exchange (Dexter mechanism). The dye then fluoresces red. If PFAS are present in the sample, they enter the polymer and displace the dye molecules by a fraction of a nanometer. This is enough to stop the electron exchange and thus the energy transfer. The dye’s red fluorescence is “switched off,” while the blue fluorescence of the polymer is “switched on.” The degree of fluorescence change is proportional to the concentration of PFAS.
This new technique, which has a detection limit in the µg/l range for PFOA and PFOS is suitable for on-site detection in highly contaminated regions. Detection of trace amounts of these contaminants in drinking water can be achieved with sufficient precision after pre-concentration of the samples by solid-phase extraction.
What is the value of a river? Or a healthy wetland that purifies water, impedes floods, and traps carbon?
High Cost of Cheap Water, a provocative report commissioned by the conservation heavyweight WWF, attempts to answer that question in dollars. The conclusion: freshwater ecosystems have an economic use value of $58 trillion, or roughly 60 percent of global GDP.
The staggering figure accounts for direct uses (the water used by households, farms, and industries) and services provided indirectly (flood protection, water storage, animal habitat), which are seven times more valuable than direct uses.
Stuart Orr, freshwater practice leader for WWF, spoke with Circle of Blue about the implications of putting water in economic terms.
“When we have those valuations it allows you to have a conversation about the values and benefits that people derive from these systems,” Orr said. “I hope that leads us to better outcomes. It’s sometimes unfortunate that we have to put everything in dollar terms, but that’s where we are in trying to convince people this is the right thing to do.”
The global economic system as it is currently structured does a poor job of valuing water, Orr said. The report calls this error a form of “water blindness.”
Water blindness is “pervasive,” Orr said, even among organizations working on intimately connected topics like climate and food. “It is the biome and the resource that is forgotten. That’s why we came out with a big number. It’s also the resource that has no economic signals to send to anybody that we’re doing the wrong things and we may need to reconsider how we are using water.”
After nearly three decades in water conservation, Orr lamented the lack of progress. “I’m not seeing the kind of action and movement I would have hoped or would have thought by now.”
Will a more complete evaluation of the value of water, one couched in business-friendly GDP terms, drive home the message?
“We have to do whatever it takes to shake people out of this lethargy around water,” he said.
As Brazil’s drought continues, the Amazon River has fallen to its lowest level since records began in 1902.
UNESCO has approved a $5 billion dam downstream from Victoria Falls for both Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Along Kenya’s Lake Victoria shores, flooding attributed to climate change has contributed to water-related disease and destroyed villages.
Melting glaciers have been a boon for Peruvian farming communities in need of water now — but insecurities in the long-term are a major concern.
In Gaza, an ongoing shortage of water supplies, cut off by Israeli forces, have reached a breaking point.
“We need to truck fuel into Gaza now. Fuel is the only way for people to have safe drinking water. If not, people will start dying of severe dehydration … Water is now the last remaining lifeline.” — United Nations statement.
Prior to the latest escalation of violence between Israel and Palestine, daily water consumption in Gaza was less than the World Health Organization’s recommendation, Reuters reports. It was just 83.1 liters per capita, compared to WHO’s recommended 100 liters.
Today, severe water shortages have become “a matter of life and death,” and in a majority of schools, “clean water has actually run out,” according to the UN.
Gaza has few options for receiving potable water. Their only natural source is the Coastal Aquifer Basin, which is polluted and unreplenished. More than 96 percent “of household water from the aquifer is undrinkable,” according to Reuters.
Gaza’s three major desalination plants have had their power cut off by Israeli authorities, leaving residents to drink saltwater or dig wells where groundwater is polluted with sewage. Over the weekend, a deal brokered between U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was said to have renewed a supply of water from Israel to Palestine’s Gaza Strip. But according to Hamas, this has not taken place.
Gaza still needs fuel, currently withheld by Israel, to restart and re-power desalination plants.
The Negro and Amazon rivers meet in Brazil’s port of Manaus, a city of 2 million people located in the country’s northwest region. At this spot the Amazon’s water level is now the lowest ever recorded, Reuters reports.
“We have gone three months without rain here in our community,” Pedro Mendonca, a rainforest villager, told Reuters. “It is much hotter than past droughts.” In some areas of the Amazon, communities are experiencing their worst drought in more than 40 years.
The state of Amazonas’ civil defense agency has said that 481,000 people — those who rely on the river for transportation, resources, fishing, and “access to food and medicine” — have been affected so far by the drought, attributed in the region to the El Niño climate pattern. The effects of such weather are expected to last until at least December, according to state scientists.
Water shortages have additionally strained water quality. Two weeks ago, the deaths of more than 100 river dolphins in the Amazon were attributed to drought and hot water. As the lack of precipitation persists, children are falling ill with diarrhea, fevers, and vomiting.
This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers
12
The number of villages in Kenya near the shores of Lake Victoria that were submerged after an unexpected surge of water flooded the lake’s banks, destroying communities and leaving many children orphaned, in 2019, Mongabay reports. Experts have attributed the flooding to climate change, unpredictable amounts of rainfall, and a “lack of vegetation to control runoff.” In the years since the flooding, makeshift communities have become a breeding ground for diseases related to poor water and sanitation. Many children have been forced to become the heads of their families. Meanwhile, experts warn that unprecedented flooding will persist as a climate-related crisis into the future.
51
Percent of Peru’s glaciers lost to climate change over the past 50 years, the country’s National Water Authority reports. This high-altitude melting, however, has created immediate opportunities for valley farming communities. They have been using the melt to grow water-intensive crops including strawberries and sugar-snap peas, The Guardian reports. Hotter temperatures and drought across Peru’s Cordillera Blanca region had put agricultural livelihoods at risk — if not for glacial melt and the freshwater reservoirs the phenomenon created, agribusiness would have been unsustainable. But when the communities look up into the Andes peaks, they see little snow. And by the year 2111, Peru’s Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation predicts, the last snow could disappear. When that happens, residents are unsure where their water will come from.
On the Radar
UNESCO has granted permission for a $5 billion hydroelectric dam to be built downstream from Victoria Falls, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and where Zambia and Zimbabwe are separated by the Zambezi River, Business Insider reports.
The countries had been pushing for the dam’s approval as a way to make money and limit domestic power outages, though they remain apart on issues such as construction cost.
Environmental activists have been pushing back on the project, saying that the complex will harm the waterfall and river health, but UNESCO was satisfied with the proposed dam’s design. According to Business Insider, “the project is built as a run-of-river project, which means there would be little water storage behind the turbines, limiting the impact on Victoria Falls.”
More Water News
Marimo: The population of marimo, “popular pet water plants” and filamentous algae found only in the world’s coldest lakes, is decreasing on a global scale, researchers at Kobe University have found, Science Daily reports.
Massacre River: The river, which forms the natural border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti and is an important channel for trade and commerce, has been shut down since September as the two countries continue to spar politically over usage, construction, and treaty rights, U.S. News and World Report reports.
LAS VEGAS, New Mexico — The largest fire in New Mexico history began with a disastrous government agency blunder. Its consequences for land and a small northern New Mexico city’s water were magnified by man-made climate change.
In the first week of April 2022, the U.S. Forest Service was setting a controlled burn in Santa Fe National Forest near the rocky promontory of Hermit’s Peak. A tool to thin overgrown forests, prescribed fires are intended to reduce the risk of hundred-thousand-acre megafires that have recently incinerated the American West.
Fanned by shifting winds blowing across dry timber, the deliberately ignited flames jumped containment lines. Then a dormant fire in nearby Calf Canyon reignited and merged with the blaze beneath Hermit’s Peak. Combined, the fire grew into an uncontrolled juggernaut that burned 341,735 acres of public and private land over four months.
But the collision between government error and climate change that produced a colossal fire disaster in the forests of northern New Mexico didn’t end once the flames were extinguished. The fire was a prelude to a water supply emergency that the city of Las Vegas still reckons with.
The fire burned the upper reaches of the Gallinas River watershed, the drinking water source for more than 17,000 people in and around Las Vegas. The fire had plenty of fuel — the watershed hadn’t had a major burn in more than a century. Ash and sediment flushed into the river from the bald slopes of the burn scar are undeniable threats to the city’s water treatment system.
By the end of August 2022, amid heavy monsoon rains, Las Vegas had a full-blown menace: a deteriorating river and just 21 days of water remaining in storage.
The trials of Las Vegas in the last year and a half are a sharp illustration of climate vulnerability in the American West, the domino effect of climate disasters, and the cost to taxpayers of repairing the damage. Similar cautionary tales dot the region’s map. Fires in recent years have destroyed water systems in Superior, Colorado; Detroit, Oregon; Malden, Washington; and in the California locales of Paradise, Santa Rosa, and the San Lorenzo Valley.
The risk of high-severity fire is growing due to decades of fire suppression combined with a warming planet. A fuels buildup is being conditioned to burn. As the number of burned acres trends upwards, the U.S. Forest Service expects one-third of western U.S. watersheds to experience a doubling of post-fire sediment flows in rivers by mid-century. Towns downstream of flammable terrain are a lightning strike or undoused campfire away from being unable to provide reliable water service.
The seat of San Miguel County, Las Vegas is one of the poorest municipalities in one of the country’s poorest states. The city’s poverty rate is more than 30 percent. The Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire so damaged the Gallinas watershed – charring the soil and increasing the sediment load in streams – that the drinking water treatment system cannot keep up. It must be replaced.
Unable to afford such a large expense on its own, Las Vegas turned to Congress. Lawmakers were willing to open the public purse due to the federal government’s role in causing the disaster. The Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire Assistance Act was included in a short-term budget extension that President Biden signed on September 30, 2022. It offered $2.5 billion to compensate property owners for fire damage. The final 2023 budget bill added $1.45 billion to the pot, bringing the total federal assistance for injuries and property losses to $3.95 billion. That includes $140 million to replace water treatment facilities damaged by the fire.
Las Vegas intends a complete overhaul: a new water treatment plant, equipment to remove sediment from river water before it enters the treatment facility, and a system to purify wastewater to reuse as drinking water. Full build-out might take seven years, but when all the pieces are in place it will be the largest capital project in the city’s history.
“It’s huge,” Mayor Louie Trujillo told Circle of Blue about the federal assistance. “We could have never done it. We don’t have the budget.”
A Chaotic Period
As soon as the fire started, Maria Gilvarry knew that her city’s water supply was in jeopardy.
“The watershed is our water system,” Gilvarry, the Las Vegas Utilities Department director, told Circle of Blue. “So the more of the watershed that burns, the more that impacts our ability to treat and provide water.”
Even as the forests above Las Vegas smoldered, monsoon rains pummeled the burn scar last summer, delivering huge slugs of soil and debris into the Gallinas River. “It was just day after day of brown and black water,” Gilvarry recalled. The sediment load was too thick for the 1970s-era treatment facility. Two of the city’s three reservoirs were incapacitated by the muck.
Forests are on the frontlines of climate disasters. Hotter temperatures are a hair dryer pointed at mountain slopes that bristle with dense stands of trees and understory growth.
Because forests provide a disproportionately large share of the nation’s drinking water, what happens in the woods doesn’t stay in the woods. Though forests are water sources in eastern ranges like the Appalachians and Catskills, the water-forest-fire relationship is especially acute in the drying American West.
According to U.S. Forest Service research, national forests in the western states account for just 19 percent of the land area. But they contribute 46 percent of the surface water supply.
Amanda Hohner, an assistant professor at Montana State University, has spent a decade studying the effect of wildfire on municipal water systems. She says the places most vulnerable to wildfire contamination of drinking water sources share several characteristics. They are small systems with a single, surface water source — usually a river or lake. Who fits that description? The city of Las Vegas, for one.
Las Vegas has a backup groundwater well for emergencies. But Gilvarry said that mechanical problems kept it offline last summer. When the fire started, the Gallinas River was the only option.
It was a chaotic, high-stress period. Evacuated from her property, Gilvarry was running the utility department while staying in a trailer on a co-worker’s property. Her husband volunteered to fight the fire.
The utility crew shifted to round-the-clock operations at the water treatment plant, watching nervously as the fire approached — but never overran — the facility.
“Young staff members could look out and see flames,” Gilvarry said. “And, you know, they wanted to go home with their families at night. So part of my job was to counsel them and keep them safe, while also keeping water flowing for the community. And they did it — those employees were awesome.”
After the fire threat subsided, the task did not get easier. The Army Corps of Engineers installed 10-foot-tall steel Geobrugg netting across side canyons to catch large trees and boulders. The U.S. Geological Survey ramped up its stream monitoring. Straw-filled wattles, rock-filled gabions, berms, and barricades were deployed to prevent ash and sediment from entering the Gallinas. And yet it was not enough. Monsoon rains were severe, and sediment spiked.
Trujillo and Gilvarry said that Las Vegas made it through the emergency period by focusing on conservation until a temporary state-funded sediment removal system could be installed at Storrie Lake, one of the storage reservoirs. Water department staff talked with restaurants and laundries. They asked car washes to voluntarily shut down. They identified pipe leaks and sealed them. Water was brought in via truck and bottle. Trujillo made frequent appearances on radio, in town hall meetings, at the senior center, at the community college.
“The citizens were ready to help us and they did,” Trujillo said.
‘A Marathon, Not a Sprint’
High-intensity fires do more than scorch trees and destroy homes. They upend the ecological function of entire watersheds. Burned forests become riddled with impairments. Shorn of trees, the land sheds more water than before. Though more water flows downstream, the costs of megafire outweigh this benefit. Without the forest buffer, floods are more destructive and more common. The land erodes easily. More nutrients are flushed downstream.
For these reasons, the conservation groups American Rivers named the Gallinas one of the country’s most endangered rivers for 2023.
“The recovery of wildfire can be a little bit different from other natural disasters, in that the impacts can be cascading,” explained Madelene McDonald, a water scientist with Denver’s drinking water utility, which has also contended with the ripple effects of wildfires. “They’re not necessarily all at once, but it’s those repetitive storm events that can cause the greatest impact.”
It happens again and again in the western states. Nitrogen levels in Colorado streams spiked immediately after the 2002 Hayman fire and remained elevated for more than a decade. Nitrogen is a plant vitamin that feeds lake-befouling algal blooms. And that’s not the only contaminant. Carbon, organic matter, heavy metals, and sediment — all accumulate in post-fire streams.
These chemical and physical changes to land and water are impairments that Gilvarry and her staff will face for years. More organic matter in the river can interfere with drinking water treatment. Disinfection chemicals like chlorine can produce toxic byproducts when too much carbon is in the source water. Sediment also clogs reservoirs and reduces water storage capacity.
The risks for Las Vegas were not unknown. The 1994 Gallinas River Watershed Plan, a joint effort with the city, U.S. Forest Service, and Tierra y Montes Soil and Water Conservation District, noted the need to reduce the fuel load in the watershed. The Viveash fire, in year 2000, burned mostly in the adjacent Cow Creek drainage. But some 820 acres of high-intensity fire did creep into the Gallinas watershed.
“A fire of Viveash’s magnitude occurring completely in the Gallinas Watershed would be disastrous for those who depend on Las Vegas’ water quality,” according to a March 2006 environmental assessment of prescribed fire that was prepared by the Santa Fe National Forest. That is exactly what happened with Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon.
Though the summer of 2022 was a nightmare, the summer of 2023, in terms of water quality, was much better. Monsoon rains were a trickle, not a flood. Sediment levels have been manageable. All three reservoirs are functioning again.
A bright spot for Gilvarry is that Las Vegas itself did not burn. That means there are no contaminants to flush from drinking water pipes. Cities in California, Colorado, and Oregon had to deal with benzene and other volatile chemicals in their water distribution systems after fires burned within city limits.
Denver’s experience with wildfire is a template for Las Vegas’s future. Both the Hayman fire and the 1996 Buffalo Creek fire burned the watersheds above Strontia Springs reservoir, a storage facility through which 80 percent of Denver’s drinking water passes. Denver Water is still planting trees in the burn scar. Even today, more than two decades after the fires, McDonald sees sediment levels in the reservoir climb after heavy rain.
“Recovery really is a marathon and not a sprint,” McDonald said.
How can communities like Las Vegas better prepare for the race? McDonald is part of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, a group of more than 50 national and regional fire experts tasked by Congress to recommend policy solutions to the wildfire crisis.
In September the commission submitted its report. Among its many recommendations are five specific to drinking water. In essence, they focus on prevention and response. Before a fire, utilities need to map their vulnerabilities and reduce fire risk in their watersheds by thinning and incorporating low-intensity burns. Risk assessments could identify utilities in need of water infrastructure upgrades – those like Las Vegas that have a sole surface water source or do not have the equipment to handle higher sediment levels. Portland, Oregon, for instance, is building a $1.48 billion water filtration plant, scheduled for completion in 2027, that will filter sediment from post-wildfire erosion in its forested Bull Run watershed.
Congress also has a role, the commission argues. Lawmakers could authorize grant funding for these assessments and amend existing forest restoration programs so that they explicitly target funds to areas with critical sources of drinking water, even though those areas may be far from where people live. Lawmakers could expand the timeline for disaster-relief funding, acknowledging that fire can harm water quality for years.
Gilvarry points to funding as a major obstacle to protecting water for smaller, low-income areas. Even if they are aware of the risks, can they bear the adaptation costs? “For the community to have built a top-of-the-line system ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago to plan for this would have been multi-million dollars, but it would have come from the residents here,” Gilvarry said. “And I don’t think the residents could have afforded that.”
There are targeted research approaches, too. The Wildfire and Water Security project is investigating how drinking water systems can become more resilient to wildfire. Led by the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station along with academic partners at Montana State, Oregon State, and Washington State, the initiative is considering water treatment options, water quality after fires, and the economic implications of fire damage and risk-reduction costs.
At the state level, the Colorado Water Conservation Board assessed the vulnerability of drinking water infrastructure in the state to wildfire damage. Called Wildfire Ready Watersheds, the program is intended to enable community-level preparation before a fire.
Critical to the effort is the U.S. Forest Service. Armed with $3.5 billion from the two-year-old Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to prepare communities for wildfire, the land management agency has adopted a “fireshed” approach in responding to the wildfire crisis. Firesheds are forest and rangeland units of roughly 250,000 acres that, if wildfire erupted, could damage homes, watersheds, water supplies, utility lines, and other critical infrastructure.
The U.S. Forest Service did not make any staff available for an interview. “The agency collaborates in the development and implementation of source water protection plans,” the press office wrote to Circle of Blue in an email. “In many places, we have agreements with local municipalities on how activities in the municipal watershed will be carried out to ensure the drinking water supply is protected; some of these agreements go back decades.”
A year after being pushed to the brink, Las Vegas residents celebrated the return of the People’s Faire, a community arts festival held on August 26 that had been absent for three years due to Covid and the fire.
Food and crafts vendors lined the sun-dappled lawn in front of the Monticello-inspired Carnegie Library, while children plotted their moves on a giant chess board.
Trujillo, in sunglasses and a stylish floral shirt, acted as unofficial host, greeting nearly everyone who passed by. For a moment, on a warm late-summer day, the water emergency was a memory and all was right in Las Vegas.
“It’s nice that we have all this,” an older woman told him.
Her friend, who was shopping for Christmas presents, agreed. “When I lived in Oregon, we didn’t have the parades,” she said. “We didn’t have all this stuff that we have here. So it is nice. This little town does a lot.”
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Low water levels on the lower Mississippi River are likely to persist through at least January despite expected above-normal precipitation across the southern United States this winter, forecasters with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said on Thursday.
The severe to exceptional drought choking the lower Mississippi River valley is expected to improve this winter as the El Nino weather pattern brings better rains to the region, NOAA said in its U.S. winter weather outlook.
But lingering drought in the upper Midwest and forecasts for normal to below-normal precipitation across basins that supply tributaries like the Illinois and Ohio rivers could slow the Mississippi River’s recovery.
Low water has slowed export-bound barge shipments of grain from the Midwest farm belt for a second straight year during the busy fall harvest season, making U.S. exports of corn and soybeans less competitive in the world market.
“We are expecting improving drought conditions for the lower to middle Mississippi Valley during the next few months. But for the hydrological impacts such as low river levels and low ground water levels, that will be a little slower to recover,” said Brad Pugh, operational drought lead with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
“The hydrological impacts could linger beyond the end of January,” he said.
The Mississippi River fell to an all-time low on Monday at the Memphis, Tennessee, river gauge, eclipsing the previous low water record set nearly a year ago, according to National Weather Service data.
Shallow river conditions prompted barge shippers to restrict the amount of grain they haul to avoid getting stuck in the drought-parched waterway.
Still, areas of the lower Mississippi River have been closed to navigation at times over the past several weeks following vessel groundings or as U.S. Army Corps of Engineers crews dredged low spots to deepen the channel.
The port in Manaus, the region’s most populous city located where the Negro river meets the Amazon river, recorded a water level of 13.59 meters (44.6ft) on Monday, according to its website. That is the lowest level since records began in 1902, passing a previous all-time low set in 2010.
After months without rain, Pedro Mendonça, an Amazon rainforest villager, was relieved when a Brazilian NGO delivered supplies to his riverside community near Manaus late last week.
“We have gone three months without rain here in our community,” said Mendonça, who lives in Santa Helena do Inglês, west of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state. “It is much hotter than past droughts.”
Some areas of the Amazon have seen the lowest rain levels from July to September since 1980, according to the Brazilian government disaster alert center Cemaden.
Brazil’s science ministry blames the drought on this year’s onset of the climate phenomenon El Niño, which is driving extreme weather patterns globally. In a statement earlier this month, the ministry said it expected the drought will last until at least December, when El Niño’s effects are forecast to peak.
The drought has affected 481,000 people as of Monday, according to the civil defense agency in the state of Amazonas, where Manaus is located.
Late last week, workers from the Brazilian NGO Fundação Amazônia Sustentáve (FAS) fanned out across the parched region near Manaus to deliver food and other supplies to vulnerable village communities. The drought has threatened their access to food, drinking water and medicines, which are usually transported by river.
Nelson Mendonça, a leader in Santa Helena do Inglês, said although some areas were still reachable by canoe, many boats had not been able to travel on the river to bring supplies, and goods were being transported by tractors or on foot.
“It’s not very good for us, because we’re practically isolated,” he said.
Luciana Valentin, who also lives in Santa Helena do Inglês, said she was concerned about the cleanliness of the local water supply after the drought reduced water levels.
“Our children are getting diarrhea, vomiting, and often having fever because of the water,” she said.
Arizona, stressed by years of drought, has declared its house-building boom will have to be curbed due to a lack of water, but one of its fastest-growing cities is refusing to give up its relentless march into the desert – even if it requires constructing a pipeline that would bring water across the border from Mexico.
The population of Buckeye, located 35 miles west of Phoenix, has doubled over the past decade to just under 120,000 and it is now priming itself to become one of the largest cities in the US west. The city’s boundaries are vast – covering an area stretching out into the Sonoran desert that would encompass two New York Cities – and so are its ambitions.
Buckeye expects to one day contain as many as 1.5 million people, rivaling or even surpassing Phoenix – the sixth largest city in the US, which uses roughly 2bn gallons of water a day – by furthering the tendrils of suburbia, with its neat lawns, snaking roads and large homes, into the baking desert.
Arizona’s challenging water situation appears to be a major barrier to such hopes, however. In June, the state announced that new uses of its groundwater have essentially hit a limit, placing restrictions on house building, just a few months after the state lost a fifth of its water allocation from the ailing Colorado River.
There isn’t enough water beneath Buckeye to support homes not already being built, Arizona’s water department has said. But the city is embarking upon an extraordinary scramble to find water from other sources – by recycling it, purchasing it or importing it – to maintain the sort of hurtling growth that continues to propel the US west even in an era of climate crisis.
“Personally, my view is that we are still full steam ahead,” said Eric Orsborn, Buckeye’s ebullient mayor. Orsborn said he understands the state has to be “really careful” with water resources but that the city is exploring “options to keep us going and allow us to continue to grow at the rate that we want to grow”.
Some of the grander options are ambitious to the point of appearing outlandish, such as a plan to bring desalinated seawater from Mexico to Arizona via a lengthy, uphill pipeline. Arizona may, instead, pipe in water from the west, in California, or from 1,000 miles east, from the Missouri River. Buckeye has already shown it is prepared to spend big to achieve its dreams – in January the city council agreed to spend $80m for a single acre of nearby land, an area smaller than a football pitch, just to secure its attached water rights.
Buckeye’s mayor, Eric Orsborn: ‘What we need to figure out is what’s that next crazy idea that’s out there.’ Photograph: Adam Riding/The Guardian
“We’ll be as big or larger than Phoenix, ultimately – we don’t have to have all that water solved today,” Orsborn said in city hall, which itself may have to be upsized to deal with Buckeye’s growth. On his office wall is a map of the vast expanse of untouched desert that sits within the city’s voluminous territory.
“What we need to figure out is what’s that next crazy idea that’s out there,” said the mayor, who also owns a construction company. “We’re just hustling to get to that point, to keep things moving along.”
Perhaps the most “crazy” of the ideas is the one that would involve building a desalination plant in the Mexican town of Puerto Peñasco, perched on the edge of the Gulf of California, to suck up seawater and then send the treated water in a pipeline several hundred miles north to Arizona. Much of the pipeline’s proposed route is uphill and will traverse an international border, a federally protected area famed for its cactus and several small towns.
A new housing development in northern Buckeye. Photograph: Adam Riding/The Guardian
Environmentalists have already criticized the plan for its potential ecological impact upon both land and sea – the salty brine left over would be dumped back into the Gulf of California, altering its composition and potentially harming its marine life. The odds may be against the pipeline, given the cost and opposition. But IDE, the Israeli company that proposed the $5bn plan, has said the pipeline would be “transformative” for Arizona, provide enough water for the entire state and “secure Arizona’s future growth”.
Arizona’sWater Infrastructure Finance Authority (or Wifa), the agency tasked with implementing a new inflow of water to the state, is assessing the Mexico idea, as well as other options. Chuck Podolak, the director of the agency, has his own office map that helps him envision other possible stupendous infrastructure undertakings, such as a pipeline running from another desalination plant, in California, or a pipeline that could bring water from the distant Missouri River to the thirsty desert.
“Those are big, audacious ideas, but I don’t think any are off the table,” said Podolak. “We’re going to seek the wild ideas and fund the good ones.”
Podolak acknowledged that any pipeline from Mexico will face numerous hurdles – Wifa has been in touch with lawmakers in Mexico, some of whom are unfavorable to the idea – but insisted Arizona will continue to push for a new, leviathan project to make up its water shortfall.
“I just want to see multiple projects and figure out the best one for us. If we want to have that long-term security, we do need a new bucket, so to speak, a new source of supply outside of the state. This is a fantastic place to live,” he said.
Podolak points out such big ideas are in keeping with previous monumental, and seemingly impossible, projects. “We dammed up the Colorado River and built the Hoover Dam, we have an artificial river that runs from Lake Havasu to Tucson uphill 300 miles – it’s called the Central Arizona Project,” he said.
“All these things seemed audacious, but now they’re part of the landscape. We’ve been doing it for 100 years.”
Such grandiose plans are being mulled because Arizona faces pressures like never before. The state has been in the teeth of a drought, spurred by global heating, that is the worst the US south-west has seen in approximately 1,200 years. About a third of the state’s water supply comes from the Colorado River, which has shrunk as temperatures have risen. Last year, under a mechanism where Arizona shares water with other states, its allotment of Colorado River water was cut by 21%.
Arizona’s other major water source – from underground aquifers, sucked up by wells – has become depleted in some parts of the state and, in the rapidly growing areas on the fringes of Phoenix, has been entirely laid claim to by developers who have to show under law that there is a reliable 100-year supply of water before erecting new homes on the cheap desert land.
In June, in a sobering dose of reality, the state declared there was not enough water for all current planned construction in the Phoenix region – amounting to a 4% shortfall over the next century – and that all future housing developments will have to find some other source of water. Already approved projects, and new housing within Phoenix itself, could still continue, the state stressed. “We are not out of water and we will not be running out of water,” said Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s governor.
While the decision won’t halt Arizona’s growth – which has been fueled by relatively cheap housing, fine weather and fresh jobs brought by firms such as Intel and newcomer battery manufacturers – some see the end of an era in which sprawling homes, swimming pools, lawns and water-intensive crops could endlessly unfurl into the desert.
“It’s a clear sign that this sprawl was never sustainable and that there is just no more groundwater left to do that,” said Christopher Kuzdas, the senior water program manager at Environmental Defense Fund who argues Arizona should better conserve its own groundwater before turning to new pipelines.
“We are at a real crossroads as to how Arizona grows,” he said. “There just aren’t many easy options left when it comes to water.”
A downtown Buckeye restaurant. Photograph: Adam Riding/The Guardian
For Buckeye, the conversion of farmland to new housing will subsume existing irrigation rights – agriculture takes up more than 70% of Arizona’s water, after all, with Hobbs recently removing state land from being used to grow alfalfa, a particularly thirsty, and controversial, crop in order to protect what she called the state’s “water future”.
Beyond that, as the city expands into untouched desert, there is water recycling, where wastewater is treated and reused, or perhaps a raising of the dam on the nearby Verde River to collect more water. Any new water pipeline from further away will take many years, and billions of dollars, if it happens at all. Orsborn insists the city will find a way.
“I’m not saying it’s not going to be a challenge, but it’s not going to break that growth,” said the mayor. “For thousands of years, water’s been moved from one point to another point. We just have to continue to do that.”
Driving around Buckeye – there isn’t really any other option to get around – can feel rather disjointed. The city’s downtown is somewhat threadbare but then at the periphery there is a frenzy of building activity, with rows of new beige and cream-colored houses with piles of roof slates being put in place, swarms of machinery preparing dusty tracts of ground, flags fluttering with legends such as “new homes” and “now selling”.
A new housing development at Copper Falls by New Home Co. Photograph: Adam Riding/The Guardian
Drive a further 30 minutes north into the desert, a mix of scrubland dotted with saguaro cacti and two starkly beautiful mountain outcrops, you’re somehow still in Buckeye and work is underway to conjure up a massive new development called Teravalis – meaning “land of the valley” – that calls itself a “city of the future” that will eventually house 300,000 people and various businesses.
“We are effectively building a small city,” said Heath Melton, the president of the Phoenix region for the developer, the Howard Hughes Corporation. Teravalis will reclaim water and be cautious with its use of turf and irrigation, according to Melton. “We want to enrich people’s lives and be good stewards of the environment,” he said. “Buckeye is very bullish on its growth and it’s good for them to be bullish.”
For the optimists, Arizona’s past is instructive. The state has found spectacular fixes to secure the water that has catapulted its growth and is getting better at saving it – somehow Arizona uses less water than it did in the 1950s despite now having 500% more people.
Downtown Buckeye. Photograph: Adam Riding/The Guardian
But past conditions bear a dwindling resemblance to Arizona’s future. This summer was, globally, probably the hottest that humans have ever experienced. In Phoenix, there were a record 31 consecutive days above 100F (37C) and the seasonal monsoon season was the driest since 1895. It will only get hotter and drier. Arizona may be able to move the sea from Mexico, but somehow out-engineering the climate crisis in the longer term will be an even more grueling feat.
“I think Buckeye has some real challenges and the degree of their success will depend on the degree to which people are willing to pay for those more expensive solutions,” said Kathryn Sorensen, an expert in water policy at Arizona State University.
“But it’s absolutely feasible,” she adds. “We pave over rivers, we build sea walls, we drain swamps, we destroy wetlands, we import water supplies where they never would have otherwise gone. Humans always do outlandish things, it’s what we do.”
A withering drought has turned the Amazonian capital of Manaus into a climate dystopia with the second worst air quality in the world and rivers at the lowest levels in 121 years.
The city of 1 million people, which is surrounded by a forest of trees, normally basks under blue skies. Tourists take pleasure boats to the nearby meeting of the Negro and Amazon (known locally as the Solimões) rivers, where dolphins can often be seen enjoying what are usually the most abundant freshwater resources in the world.
But an unusually dry season, worsened by an El Niño and human-driven global heating, has threatened the city’s self-image, the wellbeing of its residents and the survival prospects for the entire Amazon basin.
The forest capital has been enveloped in a murky brown haze reminiscent of China during its most polluted phase. The usually vibrant port has been pushed far out across the dried-up, rubbish-strewn mud flats.
Last week air-quality monitors registered 387 micrograms of pollution a cubic metre, as a result of smoke haze from fires in the Amazon rainforest. Photograph: Michael Dantas/AFP/Getty Images
So many fires are burning in the surrounding tinder-dry forest that air-quality monitors last week registered 387 micrograms of pollution a cubic metre, compared with 122 in Brazil’s economic capital of São Paulo. The only city in the world that measured worse was an industrial centre of Thailand.
A recent front page of the A Crítica newspaper showed a photograph of the drought-stricken port under the headline “Health in peril” and a story about the challenges of securing medicines and essential resources at a time when goods ships could not navigate the river. “Boiling Amazon” read the lead story of Cenarium magazine, which noted the unusually high heat and low humidity that have created dangerously dry conditions in the forest.
The drought has affected swathes of Brazil. The state of Amazonas has recorded 2,770 fires during the current dry season, which local media said was the highest recorded.
Although more droughts and fires than usual were to be expected in El Niño years such as this, local firefighting services were ill-prepared and ill-equipped.
The secretary of Borba town, said: “If municipalities had even the minimum structure in place, we could have avoided many problems.”
Jane Crespo, the environmental secretary of Maués, a community 155 miles (250km) from Manaus, said: “Some municipalities don’t have enough water to put out the fires.”
Floating houses and boats stranded at the Marina do Davi, a docking area of the Negro river, in Manaus. Photograph: Michael Dantas/AFP/Getty Images
Rivers are the only means of access in many parts of the Amazon. As their levels have fallen, some communities have been cut off, raising concerns of a humanitarian disaster. Elsewhere, navigation is only possible by small boats, which make transport more expensive. At Tabatinga, Benjamin Constant and Atalaia do Norte, people complain that goods are becoming more expensive.
Factory production has also been hit by the lack of supplies, threatening the economy of Manaus and its reputation as a free-trade zone. Amazonas state authorities have called an emergency meeting to discuss the regional climate crisis and appealed to the federal government for assistance.
Road industry lobbyists are using the crisis to push demands for a new paved road – the controversial BR 319 – that would link Manaus to Porto Velho. Amazon conservationists warn this would be a disaster for one of the last remaining areas of globally important and intact forest.
The impact on other species is likely to be devastating. As well as the mass deaths of endangered river dolphins, countless other species are likely to be experiencing mortalities. The Manaus-based mycologist Noemia Ishikawa said she had noticed an almost total absence of mushrooms in the fields.
Rio Negro port is blanketed in smoke haze from fires in the Amazon rainforest. Photograph: Michael Dantas/AFP/Getty Images
Philip Fearnside, a senior researcher at the National Institute for Amazonian Research, warned the rainforest was moving closer to a point of irreversible decline as dry seasons lengthen, along with more days of extreme heat and no rain.
Adding to the risks is a growing human population that is converting more forest into pasture, which is regularly burned. Fearnside said: “All of the tree deaths from these processes can contribute to initiating a vicious cycle, where the dead wood left in the forest serves as fuels for forest fires, which are both more likely to start and spread and are more intense and damaging if they occur.
“Repeated fires can destroy the forest entirely. In addition to tipping points in terms of temperature and dry-season length, there is also a tipping point from the loss of forest beyond a certain limit, which is also believed to be near at hand.”
Brief periods of upriver rain in recent days have raised hopes the dry season may be drawing to an end, but meteorologists say it is too soon to predict that with any confidence. However, climate trends make it almost certain that this drought will not be a record for long.
