Two months after rains fell in the north, billions of litres of water are finally coursing down the Baaka-Darling system, rejuvenating the Menindee Lakes and farming communities
In late March parts of Queensland were deluged by rain. Cars were swept from roads and flash floods inundated towns as rivers broke their banks.
Billions of litres of water flowed across flood plains into creeks and from creeks into the rivers that stretch like fingers across the region.
Continue reading...Native species have been revered, feared, hunted and tamed. Now experts hope revulsion can give way to fascination
For many years, the top-rated attraction in the Tasman district of New Zealand was a cafe famed for its rural setting, seafood chowder – and tame eels.
For a few dollars you could buy a pottle of mince and a wooden stick to take down to the stream, where a blue-black mass was shining, writhing, waiting.
Continue reading...World’s Forgotten Fishes report lists pollution, overfishing and climate change as dangers
Freshwater fish are under threat, with as many as a third of global populations in danger of extinction, according to an assessment.
Populations of migratory freshwater fish have plummeted by 76% since 1970, and large fish – those weighing more than 30kg – have been all but wiped out in most rivers. The global population of megafish down by 94%, and 16 freshwater fish species were declared extinct last year.
Continue reading...Restoring degraded natural lands highly effective for carbon storage and avoiding species extinctions
Restoring natural landscapes damaged by human exploitation can be one of the most effective and cheapest ways to combat the climate crisis while also boosting dwindling wildlife populations, a scientific study finds.
If a third of the planet’s most degraded areas were restored, and protection was thrown around areas still in good condition, that would store carbon equating to half of all human caused greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution.
Continue reading...Untreated effluent flowed into waterways for more than 1.5m hours, data shows
Water companies in England discharged raw sewage into rivers on more than 200,000 occasions last year, according to data obtained by the Guardian.
The analysis reveals untreated human waste was released into streams and rivers for more than 1.5m hours in 2019.
Continue reading...On World Water Day, UN warns that more than half the global population lacking access to safely managed sanitation
Decades of chronic underfunding of water infrastructure is putting many countries at worse risk in the coronavirus crisis, with more than half the global population lacking access to safely managed sanitation, experts said as the UN marked World Water Day on Sunday.
Good hygiene – soap and water – are the first line of defence against coronavirus and a vast range of other diseases, yet three quarters of households in developing countries do not have access to somewhere to wash with soap and water, according to Tim Wainwright, chief executive of the charity WaterAid. A third of healthcare facilities in developing countries also lack access to clean water on site.
Continue reading...Minister disappointed that New South Wales did not submit Murray-Darling basin resource plans
The federal government is withholding millions of dollars from the New South Wales government for failing to complete water resource plans for the Murray-Darling basin.
In a letter to the state’s water minister, Melinda Pavey, the federal water resources minister, David Littleproud, raised concerns the 20 plans had not been submitted.
Continue reading...Decreased flows caused by water-hungry neighbours, especially India, are damaging river communities
• All photographs by Kaamil Ahmed
Holding his downturned palm level with his waist, Musana Robi Das indicates how tall he was when he started working on Bangladesh’s rivers.
As a child he helped his father ferry villagers across local waterways. Now a tall and spindly 50-year-old, he has had to abandon that life as a boatman. The waters now sit so low that his services are unnecessary. So the past decade has instead been spent repairing shoes inside a dimly lit wooden booth in the village market.
Continue reading...A year after a 90 metre-wide spinning sheet of ice drew global attention, another disc appears to be forming in the same river
What goes around comes around.
An ice disc appears to be forming in the same Maine river where an unusually large one formed last winter and quickly gained international fame.
Continue reading...Granted personhood in 2017 by the New Zealand parliament, the Whanganui is the first river in the world to be recognised as an indivisible and living being. But it still faces challenges from farming, forestry and development – and despite its beauty, the data suggests much needs to be done to nurse it back to full health
Continue reading...Operator faces choice of weakening 14km barrier or potentially devastating a biodiversity hotspot
The biggest hydroelectric project in the Amazon rainforest has a design flaw that poses a “very serious” threat to human life and globally important ecosystems, according to documents and expert testimony received by the Guardian.
The studies suggest engineers failed to anticipate the impact of water shortages on the Pimental dam at Belo Monte, which has been closed and turned into a barrier. This is forcing the operators to choose between a structural weakening of the 14km-wide compacted-earth barrier and a reallocation of water in the reservoir or on the Xingu river, which is home to indigenous communities, fishing villages and some of the world’s most endangered species.
Continue reading...Creek beds are bone dry and once-gushing springs are reduced to trickles as fights play out around the nation over control of nation’s freshwater supply
The network of clear streams comprising California’s Strawberry Creek run down the side of a steep, rocky mountain in a national forest two hours east of Los Angeles. Last year Nestlé siphoned 45m gallons of pristine spring water from the creek and bottled it under the Arrowhead Water label.
Though it’s on federal land, the Swiss bottled water giant paid the US Forest Service and state practically nothing, and it profited handsomely: Nestlé Waters’ 2018 worldwide sales exceeded $7.8bn.
Continue reading...‘Total surprise’ discovery overturns conventional understanding of rivers
In the turbid, frigid waters roaring from the glaciers of Canada’s high Arctic, researchers have made a surprising discovery: for decades, the northern rivers secretly pulled carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a rate faster than the Amazon rainforest.
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, flip the conventional understanding of rivers, which are largely viewed as sources of carbon emissions.
Continue reading...The Colorado River serves over 35 million Americans before reaching Mexico – but it is dammed at the border, leaving locals on the other side with a dry delta
The temperature is rising toward 45C (113F) as young brothers Daniel and Dilan Rodríguez skip towards a bridge over the Colorado River in the Mexican border town of San Luis Río Colorado. But there is no water flowing through the channel of one of the world’s mightiest waterways. The pair run down the river bank and cheerfully splash through stagnant puddles dotted about the riverbed.
“We wish we had a river, so we could swim, and jump and sail my cousin’s boat,” said Daniel, 12. “At least we have puddles to make mud balls, that can be fun.”
Continue reading...Environment Agency analysing Somerset stream but says there are no reports of dead wildlife
A mysterious substance that has turned a tributary of a river in the West Country bright blue is being investigated by the Environment Agency.
Tests are being carried out on the River Frome in Somerset this weekend after the water turned a luminous colour. The Environment Agency said it was treating it as a suspected pollution incident but there were no reports of dead wildlife.
Continue reading...Populations of great freshwater species, from catfish to stingrays, have plunged by 97% since 1970
Populations of the great beasts that once dominated the world’s rivers and lakes have crashed in the last 50 years, according to the first comprehensive study.
Some freshwater megafauna have already been declared extinct, such as the Yangtze dolphin, and many more are now on the brink, from the Mekong giant catfish and stingray to India’s gharial crocodiles to the European sturgeon. Just three Chinese giant softshell turtles are known to survive and all are male. Across Europe, North Africa and Asia, populations have plunged by 97% since 1970.
Continue reading...Informal settlements are expanding, with a new occupation attempt every 11 days, and the threat to the rainforest is severe
Antonio Pinto’s makeshift home on the outskirts of Manaus is an open-air shack, one of dozens of similar dwellings of timber and tarpaulin scattered around the hills.
Around them is the evidence of the use of flame and iron: the hills are scorched and brown, littered with fallen logs and toppled, twisted trees.
Continue reading...More than 100 rivers and canals flow beneath Tokyo, but from the ground it’s hard to notice them. Why has the city turned its back on water?
Of the near-endless flow of people over the busy Shibuya scramble crossing every day, few realise that beneath their feet is something else flowing, unseen and unnoticed: the crossing of two ancient rivers, the Uda and the Onden.
Beneath all the concrete and neon, Tokyo is a city built on water. It is the reason the Japanese capital’s 37 million citizens are here at all. From fishing village to seat of political power, canny water management was a key driver of the city’s extraordinary growth.
Continue reading...The Greek capital entombed its major rivers in concrete during its car-centred postwar development. Now the most storied of them, Ilisos, could be set free
Photographs by Christian Sinibaldi
Walking through the densely built metropolis of Athens, few visitors or even locals realise the Greek capital was once crisscrossed by three major rivers, not to mention some 700 smaller streams that flowed into them.
The Kifisos, the Iridanos and the Ilisos were buried under concrete during the city’s postwar car-centred development, in what daily newspaper Kathimerini has labelled “a crime against the city”.
Continue reading...Largest global study finds the drugs in two-thirds of test sites in 72 countries
Hundreds of rivers around the world from the Thames to the Tigris are awash with dangerously high levels of antibiotics, the largest global study on the subject has found.
Antibiotic pollution is one of the key routes by which bacteria are able develop resistance to the life-saving medicines, rendering them ineffective for human use. “A lot of the resistance genes we see in human pathogens originated from environmental bacteria,” said Prof William Gaze, a microbial ecologist at the University of Exeter who studies antimicrobial resistance but was not involved in the study.
Continue reading...