Traditional owners are standing together to protect the Fitzroy – a ‘beautiful, living water system’. Just watch out for the bird-sized spiders …
A Nyikina man, Mark Coles Smith, and his fellow travellers began their 400km journey down the mighty Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) on a flood plain covered in giant spiders.
“Bird-sized” spiders were clinging to the canopy, jostling for space on branches protruding above flood water that stretched for kilometres in every direction.
Continue reading...European Environment Agency judges only 110 British coastal and inland sites to be excellent
Swimmers in the UK hoping to enjoy waters certified clean and healthy this summer have been let down again. Only 110 coastal and inland sites were judged excellent in the latest bathing water quality data from Europe’s environmental watchdog.
Most of the UK’s bathing sites were not classified in 2020, however, because Covid-19 restrictions prevented sampling. This meant that out of 640 sites, 457 received no verdict in the rankings, compiled annually by the European Environment Agency and published on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Food-growing areas will see drastic changes to rainfall and temperatures if global heating continues at current rate
A third of global food production will be at risk by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at their current rate, new research suggests.
Many of the world’s most important food-growing areas will see temperatures increase and rainfall patterns alter drastically if temperatures rise by about 3.7C, the forecast increase if emissions stay high.
Continue reading...Majority of counties now under emergency declaration as California faces extensive dry spell and dwindling water supply
California has expanded a drought emergency declaration to a large swath of the nation’s most populated state amid “acute water supply shortages” in northern and central parts of California.
The declaration, expanded by Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday, now includes 41 of 58 counties, covering 30% of California’s nearly 40 million people. The US drought monitor shows most of the state and the American west is in extensive drought just a few years after California emerged from a punishing multiyear dry spell.
Continue reading...People eating termites and clay as UN says acute malnutrition has almost doubled this year in south
Madagascar’s worst drought in 40 years has left more than a million people facing a year of desperate food shortages.
The south of the island will produce less than half its usual harvest in the coming months because of low rains, prolonging a hunger crisis already affecting half the Grand Sud area’s population, the UN estimates.
Continue reading...Mass weighing 300 tonnes not expected to be cleared until June, says water company
Engineers are working around the clock to clear a “monster” fatberg 1km long which is clogging a sewer in Birmingham.
The blockage is not expected to be removed until June, water services company Severn Trent said in a statement, adding that the fatberg was about four miles east of the city centre in Hodge Hill.
Continue reading...Indigenous leaders are suing the Canadian government for not providing clean water – and ministers admit they have failed
Curve Lake First Nation, a forested community in southern Canada, is surrounded on three sides by fresh water.
But for decades, residents have been unable to safely make use of it. Wary of crumbling infrastructure and waterborne illness, the community instead relies on shipments of bottled water. The community’s newly elected chief, aged 34, has lived her whole life without the guarantee of clean water flowing from the tap.
Continue reading...Scale of aid cut emerges in leaked FCDO memo, prompting experts to describe it as ‘a national shame’
The UK is to slash funding for lifesaving water, sanitation and hygiene projects in developing nations by more than 80%, according to a leaked memo.
The cuts have been described as “savage”, “incredible” and “a national shame” by experts highlighting that sanitation and handwashing is a key line of defence during the coronavirus pandemic. The reduction to the bilateral aid budget was revealed as details emerged of cuts in the foreign aid budget.
Continue reading...Women have been deeply embedded in the movement for clean water and sanitation for decades, which has become even more pressing amid the pandemic
Deanna Miller Berry first learned of the scores of complaints about Denmark, South Carolina’s water supply, during her 2017 mayoral campaign.
For at least a decade, residents of the rural, predominantly Black and lower-income town “knew something was happening” and tried to sound the alarm, said Berry. “A lot of folks [were] complaining that they were starting to get sick, hair loss and skin issues.”
Continue reading...From relaxing baths to seaside swims, water can be a balm in difficult times. Catherine Kelly, the author of a new book on blue spaces, shares her tips
It was after her mother died that Catherine Kelly learned the healing power of water. Following instincts that she did not yet understand, she moved to live alone by the sea in County Mayo, on the west coast of Ireland, and over the next few years began to heal. “It’s an ebb and flow that water gives us that allows us to connect with ourselves. It’s an allowing,” she says.
After eight years studying the therapeutic effects of nature, she has written a book called Blue Spaces, packed with ideas about how to make the most of being in or near water. You don’t have to live near the coast to benefit. “There’s being in it, being next to it, thinking about it,” she says. Nor does it matter how much water is available. From raindrops to the ocean, urban fountains to canals and fast-moving rivers, there is a blue space for everyone. And although the phrase “blue space” typically refers to natural waters, Kelly says the possibilities for meaningful connection are the same whether it is the sea or your shower.
Continue reading...Faced with climate change, farmers in Jammu and Kashmir are switching from maize to essential oils
It’s late June and the field is glowing with fragrant purple as the women in their flowing shalwar kameez arrive with scythes to harvest the lavender. In the 30-odd villages on the hilly slopes of Jammu’s Doda district, more than 200 farmers have shifted from maize to lavender production, starting a “purple revolution” in the region.
The village of Lehrote had a moment of agricultural fame this year when a 43-year-old farmer, Bharat Bhushan, won a prestigious award for innovative farming from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, one of several institutions across the country looking to find ways of coping with the climate crisis and its devastating impact on farming. Lavender, a drought-resistant crop, can be grown on poor soil and likes lots of sun but needs little water.
Continue reading...In a nine-month investigation by the Guardian and Consumer Reports we found forever chemicals, arsenic and lead in samples taken across the US
In Connecticut, a condo had lead in its drinking water at levels more than double what the federal government deems acceptable. At a church in North Carolina, the water was contaminated with extremely high levels of potentially toxic PFAS chemicals ( a group of compounds found in hundreds of household products). The water flowing into a Texas home had both – and concerning amounts of arsenic too.
All three were among locations that had water tested as part of a nine-month investigation by Consumer Reports (CR) and the Guardian into the US’s drinking water.
Continue reading...Exclusive: The street artist’s latest work saw 60 people parade through Lake Cawndilla in NSW, holding aloft enormous portraits of local farmers and leaders as they fight to save Australia’s vital river system
The mood around Lake Cawndilla in western New South Wales on Saturday is funereal but defiant, as a procession of around 60 locals parade through scrub and sand around its banks.
They carry between them a series of 30m-long cloth figures: three local citrus farmers and prominent Baakandji artist William Badger Bates.
Continue reading...Company says sewage plan would avoid 105,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over 30 years
Thousands of homes in south-west London could soon be warmed by the waste from their local sewage works as part of England’s first poo-powered district heating scheme.
Thames Water hopes to harness the heat of human waste from its treatment plant in Kingston upon Thames to warm more than 2,000 new homes that form part of a regeneration plan for the borough’s Cambridge Road estate.
Continue reading...Water Act proposes injection of federal dollars to overhaul ageing infrastructure, create jobs and address inequalities
Democratic lawmakers and advocates are urging Joe Biden to back legislation proposing unprecedented investment in America’s ailing water infrastructure amid the country’s worst crisis in decades that has left millions of people without access to clean, safe, affordable water.
Continue reading...Public told to watch what they flush after workers take two weeks to free blockage
Members of the public have been urged to be careful what they flush after a “huge, disgusting” fatberg the weight of a small bungalow was cleared from an east London sewer.
Thames Water engineers and MTS Cleansing Services spent two weeks using high-powered water jets and hand tools to chip away at and eventually remove the rock-like heap, which was said to have smelled like composting festival toilets and rotten meat, from a conduit in Canary Wharf.
Continue reading...Record low temperatures damaged infrastructure and froze pipes, disrupting services and contaminating supplies for 12 million
Millions of Texans are facing water shortages after the deadly winter storm ravaging the state caused pipes to burst and treatment plants to back up, disrupting services and contaminating supplies.
Texas officials ordered 7 million people – a quarter of the population of the nation’s second-largest state – to boil tap water before drinking it following days of record low temperatures that damaged infrastructure and froze pipes.
Continue reading...Federal and state governments are being urged to respond to the effects of the climate crisis and to Indigenous rights to water
States and the federal government should forge a new compact on water policy that explicitly recognises climate change, and which sets “triggers” for rapid policy responses, the Productivity Commission has said.
Releasing its draft report on national water reform, the commission has called for a substantial overhaul of the 17-year-old National Water Initiative, a bedrock document that commits the states and federal government to working together on water policy as well as outlining a work program for the future.
Continue reading...The state is on the cusp of granting $2bn or more in licences, but has no way of measuring how much water will be returned to parched river systems
In the next week or two, the NSW government will reveal how many floodplain harvesting licences it intends to grant in the Gwydir valley, home to some of the biggest cotton producers in the country.
It’s the next chapter in a process that will grant between $2bn and $4bn in water entitlements to farmers as part of a plan to control and regularise a practice that captures billions of litres of water for irrigation during high-rainfall events.
Continue reading...Amateur photographer Derry Moroney lives on the mid-corth coast of New South Wales in the community of Brooms Head. For the past three years he has been photographing landscapes, animals and insects. ‘With our pristine beaches and Yuraygir national park on my doorstep, I really didn’t have to travel very far,’ he says.
In July 2020 Moroney followed the water upstream from the estuary at Brooms Head and stumbled on to Lake Cakora. Using his drone he captured stunning images of arboreal-like drainage channels in Lake Cakora. ‘The tea trees along the banks colour the water running off into the lake after a big storm,’ he says, describing the patterns as ‘like a tree of life’.
You can see more of his work on Instagram at @derry_moroney_photography