Category Archives: Water

Labour to use tactic that finished off Truss to force Tories into sewage vote

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If Tory MPs vote down opposition day motion, Labour can accuse them of thwarting attempts to clean up rivers, beaches and chalk streams

Labour is planing to use the same Commons procedure that helped remove Liz Truss from Downing Street to force Conservative MPs into a politically embarrassing vote about whether to toughen up rules on sewage discharges.

The party plans to use its regular opposition day motion on Tuesday to push a binding motion, which would oblige the government to set aside Commons time next week for a debate and vote on a Labour bill to impose tougher penalties for sewage spills.

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Swimming pools of the rich driving city water crises, study says

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Pools and well-watered gardens at least as damaging as climate emergency or population growth

The swimming pools, well-watered gardens and clean cars of the rich are driving water crises in cities at least as much as the climate emergency or population growth, according to an analysis.

The researchers said the vast difference in water use between rich and poor citizens had been largely overlooked in seeking solutions to water shortages, with the focus instead on attempts to increase supply and higher prices for water. They said the only way to protect water supplies was by redistributing water resources more equally.

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Four new wild swimming sites in England open for summer season

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Bathing waters in Rutland, Devon and Suffolk will be monitored for water quality regularly

Wild swimming fans will be able to enjoy access to four new sites in the UK that are being designated as bathing waters ahead of summer, the government has announced.

The sites in Rutland, Devon and Suffolk will receive bathing water status from next month, meaning they will soon benefit from regular water-quality monitoring.

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California: stunning shift as parched reservoirs replenished by storms

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Reservoirs whose water levels had plummeted during punishing drought have recovered – but officials warn of ‘weather whiplash’

Water levels fell so low in key reservoirs during the depth of California’s drought that boat docks sat on dry, cracked land and cars drove into the center of what should have been Folsom lake.

Those scenes are no more after a series of powerful storms dumped record amounts of rain and snow across California, replenishing reservoirs and bringing an end – mostly – to the state’s three-year drought.

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Ministers treating coastal areas like ‘open sewers’, says Labour

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Shadow minister submits bill to curb spills as Environment Agency reveals sewage was dumped for almost 1m hours last year

Ministers have treated coastal communities as if they are “open sewers”, Labour has said, after a damaging analysis of Environment Agency (EA) data revealed sewage was dumped for almost a million hours last year.

In total, the data – which was analysed by the party – shows 141,777 sewage-dumping events occurred across 137 constituencies on the coasts of England and Wales in 2022.

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Water ban in drought-stricken Tunisia adds to growing crisis

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Risk of unrest rises amid fourth dry year, poor grain harvest, weak economy and likely food subsidy cuts

Tunisia has introduced water rationing as the country suffers its fourth year of severe drought.

The state water distribution company, Sonede, has already begun cutting mains water supplies every night between 9pm and 4am. The agriculture ministry has now banned the use of water for irrigation, watering green spaces and other public areas, and for washing cars.

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Riverina irrigator fined $150,000 for illegally extracting $1.1m of groundwater

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The Natural Resources Access Regulator is also prosecuting the alleged theft of water by another irrigator near Wentworth on the Murray

A Riverina irrigator has been convicted and fined more than $150,000 for taking $1.1m worth of water from an at-risk groundwater source in south-western New South Wales during a period of drought between July 2017 and June 2020.

Dean Troy Salvestro pleaded guilty to five charges against sections 91G(2) and 60C(2) of the Water Management Act 2000 in a judgment handed down in the NSW land and environment court . Four of the charges concerned breaches of bore extraction limits and one charge was for taking water not in accordance with an access licence allocation.

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England’s top beaches faced 8,500 hours of sewage dumping last year, study says

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Many blue flag beaches were covered in waste, and Brighton was among the worst-hit, Lib Dem report shows

England’s most celebrated beaches faced 8,500 hours of sewage dumping last year, new figures show.

Many beaches with blue flag status– an international mark of recognition that a beach is deemed safe and has good water quality – were found to have been covered in waste over the last 12 months.

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Starmer accuses government of ‘turning Britain’s waterways into an open sewer’

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Lib Dems call for Thérèse Coffey to resign after raw discharges sent into English rivers 825 times a day last year

Keir Starmer has accused the government of “turning Britain’s waterways into an open sewer”, as data showed raw discharges were sent into English rivers 825 times a day last year.

Private water companies have been consistently accused of failing to take action, and the Environment Agency admitted there were more than 300,000 spillages into rivers and coastal areas in 2022, lasting for more than 1.75m hours.

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Prominent NSW irrigators fined $60,000 for breaching water licence conditions

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Peter and Jane Harris were also ordered to pay almost $500,000 in legal costs after two unsuccessful appeal attempts

Two prominent New South Wales irrigators have been ordered to pay more than $500,000 in fines and legal costs for illegally taking almost 2bn litres of water from the Barwon-Darling River system in 2016.

Cotton farmers Peter and Jane Harris were fined $60,000 in a judgment handed down by the land and environment court on Tuesday for taking 1,896.17 megalitres from the Barwon River, at the head of the Darling River, between 22 and 27 June 2016 in contravention of the conditions of the relevant water licence.

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Philadelphians rush to buy bottled water despite officials claiming water is safe after spill

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Residents show skepticism to officials insisting tap water is uncontaminated after chemical spill in the Delaware River

Residents in Philadelphia and nearby have been buying bottled water after a chemical spill upstream in the Delaware River in neighboring Bucks county, despite officials latest advisory insisting tap water was safe to drink at least up to midnight Monday.

The concerns came after a leak late Friday evening at the Trinseo Altuglas chemical facility in Bristol Township spilled between 8,100 and 12,000 gallons of a water-based latex finishing solution into the river, Bucks county health officials said Sunday.

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First global water conference in 50 years yields hundreds of pledges, zero checks

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Non-binding commitments, paucity of scientific data and poor representation of global south left a lot to be desired at summit

The first global water conference in almost half a century has concluded with the creation of a new UN envoy for water and hundreds of non-binding pledges that if fulfilled would edge the world towards universal access to clean water and sanitation.

The three-day summit in New York spurred almost 700 commitments from local and national governments, non-profits and some businesses to a new Water Action Agenda, and progress on the hotchpotch of voluntary pledges will be monitored at future UN gatherings. A new scientific panel on water will also be created by the UN.

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Australia politics live: government and opposition strike agreement over voice referendum machinery changes

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Bipartisan approach likely as Senate addresses changes to the rules governing referendums. Follow the day’s news live

Voice negotiations

The referendum machinery legislation will set up how the voice referendum will run – the machinery surruounding the vote, if you will.

We’re negotiating in good faith in the Senate that’s being led by Jane Hume who is doing an outstanding job. What we said to the government in the beginning is what we’re saying to them now and that is that we are not prepared to trash decades of referendum precedent, and not do this in a way that Australians expect us to, in their interests, for their information.

We’re asking for a pamphlet to outline the yes and no case, and we’ve talked about that. We’re asking for equal funding of the yes or no case, not the millions of dollars that may go into a public campaign on either side of this debate, but just the administration funding.

Fifty-seven per cent of the population does not want to open new coal and gas mines and I think there’s a very clear message coming through there. Secondly, no, I have got a lot of time for Jacqui Lambie, but we had an emissions trading scheme in this country and she was part of a party that voted to repeal it so let’s let’s not get too carried away with the spin here.

We’re in a climate crisis, as the UN secretary general has made clear. The decisions that we make now will reverberate for generations to come and the big decisions that we’ve got to make, do we open new coal and gas mines or not?

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Watchdog to block shareholder payouts if UK water companies miss targets

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Ofwat says new powers will be used if firms fail to reach performance and environmental goals

The UK water regulator is to use new powers to block companies from shareholder payouts if they fail to hit performance and environmental targets.

Ofwat, which in December heavily criticised some of the country’s biggest suppliers over the size of dividend payments relative to their financial performance, said the new rules would also mean water companies would “maintain a higher level of overall financial health”.

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‘The smell is next level’: millions of dead fish spanning kilometres of Darling-Baaka river begin to rot

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Releasing environmental water held downstream could help stem the spread of poor quality water, experts say

A “wall of dead fish” spanning tens of kilometres is moving along a stretch of the Darling-Baaka river near the town of Menindee, with temperatures forecast to reach 41C in the area on Saturday.

“The smell is just next level,” resident Graeme Crabb said. “Imagine the smell if you put a dead fish in your sink and let it rot for a few days – but we have millions of them.”

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UK ministers under pressure to tighten laws on ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water

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Vast numbers of people drinking water with levels that would be banned in the US, research shows

Pressure is building on UK ministers to tighten regulations on PFAS “forever chemicals” as research shows vast numbers of people are drinking water with levels that would be banned in the US.

On Tuesday, US president Joe Biden announced plans to drive down acceptable limits in drinking water to four nanograms per litre (4ng/l) for two types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFOS and PFOA), and announced proposals to regulate four more – PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS and GenX Chemicals – as a mixture.

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Catalonia launches operation to clear fish from reservoir to save drinking water

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Focus is on Sau reservoir, where water supplies have plunged to their lowest level since 1990

Officials in Catalonia have launched what is being described as an extraordinary operation to clear as many as 1.5 tonnes of fish a day, including many invasive species, from a rapidly dwindling reservoir in the hopes of salvaging drinking water as drought continues to grip the region.

The operation is focused on the Sau reservoir, a sprawling body of water flanked by mountains and tree-covered hills about 60 miles north of Barcelona, where water supplies have plunged to their lowest level since 1990.

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UK river levels already at record lows forecast to be ‘devastated’ by dry spring

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Campaigners warn that government and water companies have not done enough to conserve water supplies

River levels across the UK have been at record lows and are likely to be “devastated”, as new data forecasts broadly dry weather until at least May.

Campaigners have warned that the government and water companies have not done enough to conserve water supplies by building reservoirs and fixing leaks, as months of low rainfall could cause some areas to run out of water.

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NSW to grant coalmines licences for water from Sydney and Illawarra drinking catchments

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Perrottet government quietly gazetted rules day before caretaker period commenced for election campaign

The Perrottet government has introduced new rules that will grant coalmines licences for water from the drinking catchment for Sydney and the Illawarra region.

The government quietly gazetted the rules a day before the caretaker period commenced for the New South Wales election campaign.

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Murray-Darling Basin plan in chaos as Victoria and NSW oppose further water buybacks

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Both states are behind on their commitments and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young says South Australia is being left ‘high and dry’

A meeting of water ministers has descended into acrimony over the final stage of the $13bn Murray-Darling Basin plan, with Victoria and New South Wales joining forces to oppose further buybacks of water and demanding two more years to deliver.

The fiery meeting in Sydney ended with little progress.

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