Tag: travel

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

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

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

Wojnovich called Sunoco Pipeline, operator of the Twin Oaks pipeline that runs just across their street. It carries jet fuel underground from a fuel terminal outside Philadelphia to Newark Terminal near the airport.Sunoco tested her water, but she says they didn’t find anything.

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

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

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

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

People in the community don’t use water piped in from a reservoir far away. Instead, they use wells that draw from underground aquifers for their cooking and drinking water.When their well was finally opened earlier this year, Wojnovich was shocked at the amount of jet fuel on top of it. 

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

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

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

In 2024, Sunoco Pipeline spilled more fuel than any other pipeline in the United States, according to data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.”A pipeline company that’s more aggressive in follow-up, would have identified it sooner,” said Robert Hall, who spent decades regulating pipeline safety for the federal government. “They are not one of the best pipeline companies with regard to their management of their pipeline.”

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

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

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

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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sunoco-pipeline-fuel-leak-pennsylvania-water/

Monsoon Season, Water Shortages Worsen Health Conditions in Nepal

The Nepalese government plans to improve sanitation access to combat water-borne diseases, while the monsoon season further complicates health problems in the country.

Monsoon in Nepal

Photo by Eileen Delhi

“Colours of Monsoon.” Click to enlarge.

Twenty people have died from water-borne diseases while more than 400 cases of acute watery diarrhea have been recorded so far this year in Nepal, according to IRIN.

While the South Asian country has the second largest freshwater resource in the world it suffers from limited drinking water sources due to pollution and disease. Roughly 15 million people, about half the population, face drinking water shortages, while another 5 million don’t have access to safe drinking water, according to the Federation of Drinking Water and Sanitation Users Nepal, an organization that monitors water and sanitation. And with monsoon season in full effect–it runs from about mid-April to mid-October–major drinking water problems are worsening. In 2009, Nepal recorded 370 deaths and 67,000 cases of AWD during the six-month period, according to the Nepal Red Cross. Women, children and the elderly are often the most effected.

To combat these illnesses, the Nepalese government intends to expand access to toilets from 14.4 million to 19 million people by 2011, the The Himalayan reports.

Flooding, unsanitary dumping, agriculture and political confrontation have lead to further pollution of ground and surface water as well as a damaged water infrastructure.

“With water sources drying up, erratic rainfall and poor management of water resources, the problems are worsening every year,” said Prakash Amatya the director of NGO Forum for Urban Water & Sanitation.

More than 80 percent of diseases reported in Nepal stem from unsafe drinking water and poor hygiene, according to a 2009 report released by Water Aid, an international NGO that strives to improve water access and sanitation for communities. The report, End Water Poverty, reveals that 10,500 children die before the age of five every year from diseases contracted from unsafe water, which includes dysentery, hepatitis and cholera.

“This situation could affect a large number of families who have already been reeling under the immense water shortage situation over the last many years,” Ajaya Dixit, director of the Nepal Water Conservation Foundation, a non-partisan NGO that researches water issues in the Himalaya-Ganga region, told IRIN.

Meanwhile communities higher up in the Himalayas have limited access to the five tributaries of the River Ganges that serve as Nepal’s main water sources. These people live on less than 5 liters of water per person per day, according to a 2004 report from the University in Kathmandu.

Water deficiencies contribute to political turmoil both within Nepal and the region itself, according to Dan Smith, the secretary general of International Alert, an independent peace building organization that works in more than 20 countries.

Nepal is embedded between India and China, which also have large agriculture demands that consume a majority of the Himalayan water. A recently proposed Indian dam project on the trans-boundary Kosi River that is a tributary of the Ganges river, has caused political and social uproar within Nepal, reports The Himalayan.

Sources: The Himalayan, International Alert and IRIN.

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Monsoon Season, Water Shortages Worsen Health Conditions in Nepal

Lebanon’s Worst Drought on Record Drains Largest Reservoir

QARAOUN, Lebanon (Reuters) -Water levels at Lebanon’s largest reservoir on the Litani River have fallen to historic lows amid what experts describe as the country’s worst drought on record, threatening agriculture, electricity production, and domestic water supplies.

The Litani River National Authority said inflows to Lake Qaraoun during this year’s wet season did not exceed 45 million cubic metres, a fraction of the 350 million cubic metres annual average.

Last year, the figure stood at 230 million. The water currently available in Lake Qaraoun – around 61 million cubic meters – was unusable due to severe pollution, the authority said.

“There were dry years in 1989, 1990 and 1991, but this year is the driest,” said Sami Alawieh, head of the river authority. “We are facing a water scarcity problem across all Lebanese territories and water basins.”

Drone footage of Lake Qaraoun shows a dramatically receded shoreline, exposing cracked earth and dead vegetation.

Lebanon’s hydroelectric plants tied to the Litani basin have been shut down, Alawieh said, causing financial losses and intensifying electricity rationing by Electricite du Liban.

“We have two factors: the decline in rainfall and the pressure on groundwater,” he said.

A study by the authority found climate warming and shifting weather patterns have contributed to more frequent dry seasons and higher temperatures, exacerbating soil moisture loss and reducing the recharging of groundwater reservoirs.

The state utility has slashed supply in some areas from 20 hours a day to as little as 10.

In the fertile area around Qaraoun village, in the Bekaa Valley, farmers were already feeling the impact.

“I have never seen such drought or scarcity of rain as this year,” said Safa Issa. “We used to get snow up to a metre high. Now, it’s been 10 years since we’ve seen any.”

The strain has been compounded by erratic supply of electricity needed to run irrigation systems.

“You irrigate for three hours, then stop for three,” said Fayez Omais, another local farmer.

Suzy Hoayek, an adviser to the Ministry of Energy and Water in Beirut, said a nationwide awareness campaign to reduce consumption would be launched within 10 days.

“The most important thing is to manage demand,” she said.

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https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2025-07-15/lebanons-worst-drought-on-record-drains-largest-reservoir

18x more floods, 105% bigger storms — all from a single clear-cut

New research finds long-term impacts on flood size and frequency decades after trees are removed

Clear-cutting forests doesn’t just raise flood risk — it can supercharge it. UBC researchers found that in certain watersheds, floods became up to 18 times more frequent and over twice as severe after clear-cutting, with these effects lasting more than four decades. The surprise? Terrain details like which direction a slope faces played a huge role in flood behavior. Conventional models miss these dynamics, which could mean we’ve been underestimating the danger for decades — especially as climate change accelerates extreme weather.Share:

    

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Clear-Cutting Triggers 18x More Floods
Clear-cutting can make extreme floods dramatically more frequent and severe, especially depending on subtle terrain features. The effects can last more than 40 years, far longer than expected. Credit: Shutterstock

Clear-cutting can make catastrophic floods 18 times more frequent with effects lasting more than 40 years, according to a new UBC study.

In one watershed, these extreme floods also became more than twice as large, turning a once-in-70-years event into something that now happens every nine.

“This research challenges conventional thinking about forest management’s impact on flooding,” said senior author Dr. Younes Alila, a hydrologist in the UBC faculty of forestry. “We hope the industry and policymakers will take note of the findings, which show that it matters not only how much forest you remove but also where, how and under what conditions.”

Same treatment, different floods 

The UBC-led study draws on one of the world’s longest-running forest experiments at the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory in North Carolina and is published in the Journal of Hydrology.

The research team analyzed two adjacent watersheds, one north-facing, the other south-facing, that were both clear-cut in the late 1950s.

“We found seemingly minor landscape factors — like the direction a slope faces — can make or break a watershed’s response to treatment,” said first author Henry Pham, a doctoral student in the faculty of forestry.

In the north-facing watershed, which receives less direct sunlight and retains more moisture, floods became four to 18 times more frequent. Average flood sizes increased by 47 percent compared to pre-treatment levels, and the biggest floods grew by as much as 105 percent.

In the south-facing watershed, the same treatment had virtually no impact on flood behavior.

Old flood models inadequate 

Most conventional flood models use simplified assumptions: cut X percent of trees, expect Y percent more water runoff. But this study found that such models fail to account for extreme and erratic flood patterns that emerge after landscape disturbances.

“This experimental evidence validates our longstanding call for better analysis methods,” said Dr. Alila. “When we apply proper probabilistic tools to long-term data, we find much stronger and more variable impacts than older models suggest.”

In short, he adds, forest treatments don’t just raise average flood levels — they can fundamentally reshape a watershed’s entire flood regime, making rare and catastrophic events much more common.

The most concerning finding was that flood effects in the north-facing watershed persisted for over 40 years, confirming that forestry treatments can lead to long-term changes in a watershed’s flood response, especially as climate change brings more extreme weather, putting downstream communities at greater risk.

Policy implications

The findings have immediate relevance for forest management practices, particularly in B.C. where there are similar terrain types and forestry operations in the form of clear-cut logging.

Dr. Alila noted that the model used in this study can be used to predict which parts of B.C. are currently more at risk of extreme flooding. It can also be used to investigate how much of the severity of Sumas Prairie floods in 2021 and the more recent Texas floods can be attributed to global warming and/or land use and forest cover changes.

“Our findings highlight how multiple landscape factors interact in complex ways. As climate conditions shift, understanding those dynamics is becoming increasingly important for forest and water management.”

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/07/250718031220.htm