Tag • #water

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California cracks down on farm region’s water pumping: ‘The ground is collapsing’

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 7 days ago - 19:33

Region near Tulare Lake has been put on ‘probation’ as overpumping of water has caused faster sinking of ground

Even after two back-to-back wet years, California’s water wars are far from over. On Tuesday, state water officials took an unprecedented step to intervene in the destructive pumping of depleted groundwater in the state’s sprawling agricultural heartland.

The decision puts a farming region known as the Tulare Lake groundwater subbasin, which includes roughly 837-sq-miles in the rural San Joaquin valley, on “probation” in accordance with a sustainable groundwater use law passed a decade ago. Large water users will face fees and state oversight of their pumping.

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Record number of river barriers removed across Europe in 2023

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 15 April - 09:24

Removal of nearly 500 barriers last year will help restore disturbed waterways to their natural state, says Dam Removal Europe

Europe removed a record number of dams and other barriers from its rivers in 2023, a report has found, helping to restore its disturbed waterways to their natural states.

Nearly 500 barriers were taken out of European rivers last year, according to figures compiled by Dam Removal Europe, an increase of 50% from the year before.

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Thames Water is everyone’s problem, and time is running out to fix it

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 14 April - 14:33

Ailing water company hopes higher bills can save it, but that depends on Ofwat agreeing its salvage plans are workable

A problem like Thames Water is everyone’s problem. People with only a passing interest in finance will still feel the ripple effects should it become insolvent.

It won’t be because the water stops coming out of the tap, or the cleanliness of Britain’s rivers – so clearly scarred by the effects of creaking infrastructure and raw sewage – worsens.

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Colombians told to shower with a friend as drought hits capital water supplies

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 12 April - 10:37

Bogotá brings in water rationing with El Niño weather phenomenon meaning city could run out in under two months

Couples in Bogotá are being asked to shower together as water supplies are rationed in the Colombian capital.

Major neighbourhoods were cut off from the water grid on Thursday to preserve dangerously low water levels at reservoirs that have been starved of rain by the weather phenomenon known as El Niño.

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Profits over pipes: who should own our water? - podcast

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 10 April - 02:00

Thames Water owes hundreds of millions of pounds in debt, and the UK government is concerned about its potential collapse. Helena Horton reports

Thames Water, the UK’s biggest water company, which services 16 million people across the south of England, is facing criticism over its management.

Kemble, the parent company of Thames Water, told its creditors last week that it had defaulted on its debt. Amid fears that the company will collapse, the government is considering options for next steps.

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Mars may not have had liquid water long enough for life to form

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 4 April - 19:39

Image of a grey-colored slope with channels cut into it.

Enlarge (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona )

Mars has a history of liquid water on its surface, including lakes like the one that used to occupy Jezero Crater , which have long since dried up. Ancient water that carried debris—and melted water ice that presently does the same—were also thought to be the only thing driving the formation of gullies spread throughout the Martian landscape. That view may now change thanks to new results that suggest dry ice can also shape the landscape.

It’s sublime

Previously, scientists were convinced that only liquid water shaped gullies on Mars because that’s what happens on Earth. What was not taken into account was sublimation , or the direct transition of a substance from a solid to a gaseous state. Sublimation is how CO ₂ ice disappears ( sometimes water ice experiences this, too).

Frozen carbon dioxide is everywhere on Mars, including in its gullies. When CO ₂ ice sublimates on one of these gullies, the resulting gas can push debris further down the slope and continue to shape it.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The true cost of El Salvador’s new gold rush

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 4 April - 04:00 · 1 minute

Seven years ago, El Salvador banned all mining for metals to protect its water supply. But now the government seems to be making moves to reverse the ban – and environmental activists are in the firing line

On the afternoon of 17 May 2023, in the rural El Salvador state of Cabañas, Vidalina Morales’s mobile phone rang. It was her 33-year-old son, Manuel, but his voice sounded strange. “They have me here in the police station,” he said. He’d been arrested while playing football with friends on a local field. Morales tried to breathe. This had long been her worst fear: that her loved ones would be targeted on account of her work.

Morales, 55, is one of the most visible leaders of the Salvadoran environmentalist movement. About 5ft tall and slight, with long black hair wrapped into a sensible bun, she often wears the blouses and long skirts traditional to rural Salvadoran women. As the president of a development organisation in Cabañas called the Association for Social and Economic Development ( Ades ), she is also familiar with the halls of power. In March 2017, she and her colleagues, after years of activism, won a national ban on metal mining , the first such ban in the world. Mining posed an existential threat to the Salvadoran water supply. Worldwide, the industry often overrides local laws and regulations and leaves violence and environmental destruction in its wake. For Salvadorans, a ban was the only way to protect their resources.

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Zimbabwean president declares state of disaster due to drought

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 3 April - 20:14

Emmerson Mnangagwa says country needs $2bn of aid as severe dry spell caused by El Niño afflicts southern Africa

Zimbabwe has declared a national disaster over a drought caused by the climate event known as El Niño and President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said the country needs $2bn in aid to help millions of people who are going hungry.

The severe dry spell is wreaking havoc across southern Africa.

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Cracking geysers: the world’s most thrilling hot springs – in pictures

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 3 April - 06:00

They can be sacred, space-like, healing or heart-shaped – and anywhere on Earth. Even war can’t get between people and natural springs, as Greta Rybus shows in her latest photobook