Exclusive: Environment Agency chief calls for use to be cut by a third
England is set to run short of water within 25 years, the chief executive of the Environment Agency has warned.
The country is facing the ‘‘jaws of death”, Sir James Bevan said, at the point where water demand from the country’s rising population surpasses the falling supply resulting from climate change.
Continue reading...Thousands of homes swept away as rains follow devastating drought, with UN ‘shocked’ by lack of crisis funding support
Afghanistan has been hit with the worst flooding in seven years, with 20 dead, thousands of homes swept away and many families, already displaced by drought, forced to leave their homes for the second time.
The latest climate shock, which affected eight provinces including Kandahar, came as the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan criticised the European Commission for its “wholly insufficient” response to hunger and suffering in a country already in the grip of what analysts describe as the world’s deadliest conflict.
Continue reading...Focus for year ahead will be on ‘providing drought refuges and avoiding irreversible loss of species’
The outlook for the environment in the Murray-Darling Basin, particularly in the north, is extremely challenging and there will be almost no scope for environmental flows for the remainder of the 2018-19 year unless it rains, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has warned.
It says the focus will be “on providing drought refuges and avoiding irreversible loss of species”.
Continue reading...Commissioner to find $13bn plan to restore river took into account factors other than the environment’s needs when it set the amount of water needed to be bought back from irrigators
The Murray Darling Basin Plan is likely in breach of the commonwealth act that underpins it – the Water Act 2007, the South Australian royal commission into the plan is expected to find.
The report of the royal commission into the Murray Darling Basin Plan is being handed to the state governor on Tuesday but it is up to the SA government when it is released.
Continue reading...Low dam levels and the drought lead New South Wales government to act
Sydney’s desalination plant was likely to be switched on this weekend because of falling dam levels and the drought, the New South Wales resources minister said.
The plant is turned on when water storages drop below 60%.
Continue reading...Five mayors warn their towns could run out of water within weeks and call for their needs to be prioritised over irrigators
The mayors of several western New South Wales councils have warned their townships face major water crises within weeks and have urged the state government to impose a one-month embargo on irrigators pumping from the upper part of the Darling River system.
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