Tag: water resources management

Gaza conditions a ‘complete catastrophe,’ official warns as Israel prepares for imminent offensive | CNN

Gaza and Jerusalem
CNN
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Conditions in Gaza have deteriorated into a “complete catastrophe,” according to one official, with serious shortages of clean water and food as tens of thousands of Palestinians attempt to flee crippling airstrikes and an imminent Israeli ground offensive.

Israel’s military said Saturday its forces are readying for the next stages of the war, including “combined and coordinated strikes from the air, sea and land” in response to the unprecedented October 7 terrorist attacks by the Islamist militant group Hamas, which controls the enclave.

At least 1,300 people were killed during Hamas’ rampage in what US President Joe Biden described as “the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

Further escalation of the long-running conflict now increasingly risks spilling over regionally, prompting the Pentagon to order a second carrier strike group and squadrons of fighter jets to the region as a deterrence to Iran and Iranian proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The clock is ticking for residents fleeing south through the battered streets of Gaza after the Israeli military told civilians to leave northern areas of the densely populated strip.

More than half of Gaza’s 2 million residents live in the northern section that Israel said should evacuate. Many families, some of whom were already internally displaced, are now crammed into an even smaller portion of the 140-square-mile territory.

Civilians packed into cars, taxis, pickup trucks and donkey-pulled carts. Roads were filled with snaking lines of vehicles strapped with suitcases and mattresses. Those without other options walked, carrying what they could.

“We will commence significant military operations only once we see that civilians have left the area,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN early Sunday. “I cannot stress more than enough to say now is the time for Gazans to leave.”

Even as civilians fled southward, Israeli warplanes continued to blast Gaza over the weekend. Videos showed explosions and bodies along a Gaza evacuation route Friday, as tens of thousands of people abandoned their homes on the advice of the IDF.

Extensive destruction could be seen on Salah Al-Deen street – a main route for evacuation – in videos authenticated by CNN. A number of bodies, including those of children, can be seen on on a flat-bed trailer that appears to have been used to carry people away from Gaza City.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said 2,329 civilians have been killed and more than 9,000 injured since the conflict broke out a week ago, with 300 killed in the past 24 hours.

Casualties in Gaza over the past eight days have now surpassed the number of those killed during the 51-day Gaza-Israel conflict in 2014, according to the spokesperson for the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Richard Brennan, a World Health Organization official in Cairo, told CNN that 60 percent of those killed in Gaza the last week were women and children.

Several United Nations agencies have warned that mass evacuation under siege conditions will lead to disaster, and that the most vulnerable Gazans, including the sick, elderly, pregnant and disabled, will not be able to relocate at all. For days, Israel has cut off the Gaza population’s access to electricity, food and water.

“Despite Israeli announcements suggesting that there are safe areas for people trapped in the Gaza Strip, they are in fact exposed to bombardment throughout the entire territory, including in the south,” said Avril Benoit, executive director of Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

A growing number of nations, global rights groups and organizations are calling on Israel to respect international rules of war, urging the protection of civilians’ lives, and not to target hospitals, schools and clinics. Jordan’s foreign minister warned that Israel’s actions in Gaza are causing a humanitarian disaster and amount to mass punishment for more than 2 million Palestinians.

As food, clean drinking water and medical supplies in Gaza run out, there are urgent pleas for humanitarian aid to be allowed in. Footage showed aid convoys continuing to arrive into Egypt’s El-Arish stadium in preparation to enter Gaza through the Rafah land crossing. On the Gazan side, thousands of people are stuck at the crossing, with families telling CNN they have been unable to cross into Egypt.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN Saturday that Egypt has tried to ship humanitarian aid to Gaza but has not received the proper authorization to do so.

Palestinians who fled south, and those who are still in the north, are rapidly running out of food and water. There is no more electricity, and those with fuel-powered generators will soon live in complete blackout. Internet access, through which residents communicate their plight to the world, is also shrinking.

MSF’s Benoit told CNN Saturday there is a serious water shortage in Gaza with many people beginning to suffer from severe dehydration.

“Everyone there feels like they are likely to be collateral damage,” Benoit said. “The health care system there has always been extra fragile and was considered (a) humanitarian chronic emergency for many, many years, and now it’s a complete catastrophe.”

Palestine Red Crescent Society spokesperson Nebal Farsakh told CNN the situation in Gaza is “devastating” and though they had been notified by Israel to evacuate Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, they did not have the means to do so.

“We are not willing to evacuate because we do not have the means to evacuate our patients,” Farsakh said. “We have around 300 patients at the hospital. Some of them are in the intensive care unit. We have children in incubators. We can’t evacuate them.”

The World Health Organization said Saturday it “strongly condemns Israel’s repeated orders for the evacuation of 22 hospitals” in Gaza, calling it a “death sentence for the sick and injured.”

If patients are forced to move and are cut off from life-saving medical attention while being evacuated, they all face imminent deterioration of their condition or death, the WHO said in a statement.

Health facilities in northern Gaza continue to receive an influx of injured patients and are struggling to operate beyond capacity, with some patients “being treated in corridors and outdoors in surrounding streets due to a lack of hospital beds,” it added.

Israel, which has massed troops and military equipment at the border with Gaza, said its ramped up offensive will feature hundreds of thousands of reservists and encompass “a wide range of operational offensive plans.”

In addition to widespread airstrikes, Israel’s army is preparing troops for an “expanded arena of combat,” the IDF said in a statement on Saturday. The preparations have placed “an emphasis on significant ground operations.”

Hamas has shown a level of military capability far beyond what was previously thought, and a recent CNN investigation found it is probably well-prepared for the next phase of the war.

Texas woman has family stuck trying to evacuate Gaza

Complicating an Israeli offensive in Gaza are up to 150 hostages captured by Hamas – including soldiers, civilians, women, children and the elderly – and who are being held in the crowded enclave.

IDF spokesperson Conricus said it is a top priority to get hostages out of Gaza, despite the difficulty that a dense urban area adds to the fight.

Pointing to the “elaborate network of tunnels” that Hamas has, he said hostages “are most likely held underground in various locations.”

“Fighting will be slow. Advances will be slow, and we will be cautious,” he said.

As Israel battles Hamas, it also faces the threat of a wider conflict on new fronts.

Israel has said it is ready in case there are attacks from neighboring Lebanon or Syria.

Syria’s military reported late Saturday that an “air aggression” by Israel, originating from the Mediterranean Sea, damaged Aleppo International Airport and rendered it nonoperational.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Mission to the UN warned on Saturday that if Israel does not stop its attacks on Gaza, “the situation could spiral out of control and ricochet far-reaching consequences.”

The comments came as Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met with Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Doha, Qatar on Saturday, according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA. The agency said it was the first official meeting between Iranian officials and Haniyeh since surprise Hamas attack on Israel that Hamas called Al-Aqsa storm.

Hostilities with neighboring Lebanon are being closely monitored internationally, as an escalation could draw the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah paramilitary group into the conflict.

For days, Lebanon-based Palestinian militants have launched rockets into Israel, leading to Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory, including Hezbollah positions. Hezbollah has fired back at Israeli border positions with precision-guided missiles.

On Saturday, Israel returned fire after Hezbollah launched an attack on the disputed territory of the Shebaa farms near the Israel-Lebanon border, with CNN teams on the ground reporting prolonged shelling.

Mourners also gathered Saturday for the funeral of Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon after he was killed when Israel fired artillery into the area where he and other journalists were on Friday. The IDF said it was reviewing the circumstances surrounding the incident on the Lebanese border.

In response to the regional security situation, the Pentagon has ordered a second carrier strike group – the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower – to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, joining the strike group led by the USS Gerald R. Ford.

The US warships are not intended to join the fighting in Gaza or take part in Israel’s operations, but the presence of two of the Navy’s most powerful ships is designed to send a message of deterrence to Iran and Iranian proxies in the region.

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October 14, 2023
The company supplying water to millions of Londoners is in deep trouble | CNN Business

London
CNN
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Britain’s biggest water supplier said Wednesday it needed to raise more cash from investors, as UK media reported the government was preparing contingency plans to rescue the company.

Thames Water provides drinking water and waste water services to 15 million customers in London and the southeast of England. The utility, which counts one of Canada’s largest public pension funds among its top investors, has around £14 billion ($17.5 billion) of debt on its balance sheet.

News that it needs more money came just a day after CEO Sarah Bentley resigned with immediate effect after three years in the role. She was in the second year of an eight-year turnaround plan to address aging infrastructure, tackle leakage and reduce pollution in rivers, a legacy of underinvestment.

Thames Water received £500 million ($635 million) from shareholders in March, but said Wednesday it would need more.

The firm “is continuing to work constructively with its shareholders in relation to the equity funding expected to be required to support Thames Water’s turnaround and investment plans,” it added.

The company said it was keeping the water industry regulator Ofwat “fully informed” of its progress and added that it had a “strong liquidity position,” including £4.4 billion ($5.6 billion) of cash.

Ofwat said it was in “ongoing discussions” with Thames Water “on the need for a robust and credible plan to turn the business around.”

“We will continue to focus on protecting customers’ interests,” it added.

Government ministers, including representatives from the UK Treasury and the environment department, Defra, are holding emergency talks with Ofwat over Thames Water’s future, according to UK media reports.

One possibility would be to place the company into a special administration regime that effectively takes the firm into temporary public ownership. Sky News was first to report the discussions.

A government spokesperson told CNN: “This is a matter for the company and its shareholders. We prepare for a range of scenarios across our regulated industries — including water — as any responsible government would.”

The spokesperson added that the UK water sector “as a whole is financially resilient.”

Thames Water says about 24% of the water it supplies to customers is lost through leakage.

The company’s single biggest shareholder is the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, which holds a stake of around 32%. The Universities Superannuation Scheme, a pension fund for the academic staff of UK universities, owns nearly 20%.

Other large investors include the Chinese and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds, as well as British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, which invests on behalf of public sector workers.

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June 28, 2023
What a difference a year makes: From nearly no snow to a potentially record-breaking pile-up in California | CNN

CNN
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After a remarkable series of winter storms, California water officials reported Monday in their April snow survey the Sierra snowpack is among the largest on record, dating back to the 1950s.

The state’s Department of Water Resources surveys mountain snowpack once a month through the winter, and the April survey is usually the most consequential. Officials use the measurement to forecast the state’s water resources for the rest of the year.

Last year’s survey was pitifully low. Water officials had just a small patch of shallow snow to measure after a disappointing winter. The snow depth on April 2 was just 2.5 inches – part of a disastrous multiyear dry spell that triggered water cuts across the state.

But what a difference a year makes.

Twelve months later, the mountains are now loaded with white gold. South of Lake Tahoe at Phillips Station, as snowflakes fell from the surrounding hills, officials measured a snow depth of 126.5 inches and a snow water equivalent – how much liquid water the snow holds – of 54 inches.

Snowpack in the California Sierra is 221% of normal for this location at this time of year, officials at the Department of Water Resources said. Statewide, snowpack is averaging 237% compared to normal for the date – a significant boost after the back-to-back storms.

Sean de Guzman, snow survey manager for the state Department of Water Resources, said this is the “deepest snowpack” he has personally ever measured, noting that there have only been three other years when California snowpack has been greater than 200% of average in April.

“This year is going to join that list and be another year well above 200% of average,” de Guzman told journalists at a briefing Monday. “We still are waiting for more snow data and snow survey results to come in from our various cooperators and partners. But as of this morning, as of right now, it’s looking like this year, statewide snowpack will most likely be either the first- or second-biggest snowpack on record dating back to 1950.”

Snowpack in the Sierra is critical to the state’s water resources. The snow acts as a natural reservoir – melting into rivers and human-made reservoirs through the spring and summer – and accounts for 30% of California’s freshwater supply in an average year.

The state’s largest reservoirs, which were recently at critically low levels, have been replenished and are running higher than their historical averages.

While the heavy rains caused widespread flash flooding and several feet of snow trapped residents in their homes in the higher elevations, the deluge of snow and rain has largely improved California soil moisture and streamflow levels after being gripped by the drought for so long.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom last month also announced the removal of some drought restrictions, while the Department of Water Resources said it will increase the amount of water deliveries to 75% of requested water supplies this year – up from the initial plan of only 5% last year.

“Even though we have this extraordinary snowpack, we know that the droughts are getting deeper and more frequent, and that means we have to use water efficiently no matter what are hydrologic conditions,” Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemeth said. “And the governor has emphasized that as the path forward for California, and to make sure that we are resilient as an economy and for our environment that we all continue to use water wisely in the state.”

‘Unbelievable’: CNN reporter reacts to record snowfall in California

To find out just how much snow the Sierra Nevada were buried under this winter, Airborne Snow Observatories Inc., which provides its data to California’s Department of Water Resources, flies over the range to gauge what’s fallen.

“We measure snowpack wall-to-wall over mountains from aircraft using lasers and spectrometers,” said Tom Painter, the company’s CEO. “From that information, we can then know the full distribution of how much water there is in a mountain snowpack and also how fast it’s going to melt. That’s allowed us then to change forecast errors from being pretty large to very small and really dramatically changed water management in the west.”

The planes fly for about six hours at a time, collecting different kinds of data through open portals in the belly of their planes, which they process and deliver within about 72 hours to help municipalities allocate water resources, generate hydroelectricity and meet environmental metrics.

“The scanning LIDAR is a fancy laser pointer, essentially, that sprays out laser pulses – about 500,000 pulses per second – flying along at 23,000 feet, and measures how long it takes for the laser pulse to go out, hit the surface and come back,” Painter said. “And we can use that information to then know the surface of the snow. Every square foot of mountain snow is touched by our lasers.”

The scientists then compare this data to when they’ve flown over the same area when there wasn’t any snow.

“The difference between those two is snow depth,” Painter explained. “Depth times density is equal to what’s called snow water equivalent, which is the most important water metric out there that allows civilization to exist in the Western US. It really is the mountain snowpack that drives all of this civilization.”

The year-to-year difference couldn’t be starker, Painter said, adding that this year, there will be snow in the Sierra into the summer.

Last year, the company ended its flyover season in late May; this year, they expect to be flying until August.

Courtesy Airborne Snow Observatories, Inc.

For the Tuolumne River Basin around Yosemite National Park – which supplies water to San Francisco and other Bay Area municipalities – imagery from last year this time is mostly dark blue: barely any snow. This year, the same area is swathed in orange, yellow and white, indicating snow depths of 10 to 20 feet.

On Mammoth Mountain in the eastern Sierra, about 60 feet of snow has fallen this year, breaking the old record set in 2010. And snow depths have reached more than 100 feet in some areas around Mammoth. The amount of snow is so profound that the resort has already announced that the ski season will last through the end of July this year.

“It’s fascinating to look at how the cliffs up on the upper mountain have really gotten buried and the gullies between them are filling in to where they just are kind of disappearing,” Painter noted, adding that he’s never seen Mammoth Mountain this covered.

Despite all the rain and snow that has boosted reservoirs and allowed officials to lift some water restrictions, scientists still say drought concerns are a priority as climate change continues to impact California’s weather.

“The climate models had already been predicting what it is that we are seeing now, which is this hydroclimate whiplash where we’re going from really dry years to really wet years,” Painter said, adding that this whiplash is hard on water managers. “That means we could very well have a dry year next year. No one really knows.”

And as temperatures warm again as summer approaches, experts warn more flood threats lie ahead as the snow melts. California water officials said that after today, they plan to shift their focus “from snowpack building to snowpack melting,” and actively support emergency flood protection efforts.

“We’re now heading into another issue of increasing solar radiation and chances of warm nights and lack of refreeze, and that brings up snowmelt flooding concerns,” said Benjamin Hatchett, researcher at the Desert Research Institute. “That’s going to be something to think about as we move into the spring, summer with this colossal snowpack sitting above us.”

Hatchett also warns not to get “caught up in all these benefits,” and consider what all this water can mean for vegetation growth and wildfire fuel.

“As things start to dry out and get warmer, this is a good year to really think about what’s going to happen, what’s growing, and how can you deal with [the fuels] to reduce your fire risk in upcoming seasons,” Hatchett said.

Even with California’s historic snowpack this year, the state still pulls about a third of its water needs for the southern part of the state from the Colorado River Basin, where the snowfall totals improved this year, but were not as strong as the numbers posted in California.

The country’s largest reservoirs – Lake Powell and Lake Mead – in the Colorado River Basin are still hovering at or near-record-low levels following years of drought and overuse. But it could also improve in the coming months as snowpack levels rise in the region.

“That’s good news for a very strained and stressed system,” Hatchett said. “But we probably need five, six or maybe 10 more years of this to really make a big dent in the situation there, but this is much more encouraging to see.”

In California, water officials will head back to Phillips Station in May to measure more snow. The last time a May snow survey was necessary was in 2020, when the drought began.

The difference between last year and this year in California is significant. And although the state has all this excess of water now, climate experts warn that drought is always looming, especially in a drier, hotter and thirstier world.

Nemeth said there is much more work to be done to prepare and “adapt to our new climate realities.”

“You really get a sense of the extreme nature of our climate here in California,” she said. “There’s lots of fascinating research around the degree to which climate has been driving the intensity of these storms, but also the very rapid shift from very dry to very wet.”

“It is truly an extraordinary moment,” she said. “But we don’t get to stop and enjoy that for too long.”

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April 3, 2023
Philadelphia officials say drinking water remains safe for now after a chemical spill in the Delaware River | CNN

CNN
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The City of Philadelphia says it is now confident tap water from the Baxter Drinking Water Treatment Plant will remain safe to drink until at least 11:59 p.m. Monday following a chemical spill in the Delaware River.

At a news conference late Sunday afternoon, city officials said they had not found any contamination in Philadelphia’s water supply and there would be no disruptions to schools or city services on Monday.

“There has not been any contamination in the Philadelphia water system,” Mike Carroll, the city’s deputy managing director for transportation, infrastructure and sustainability, told reporters.

“We have enough water to sustain a safe use for drinking, cooking – all purposes – through till at least 11:59 p.m., Monday, March 27,” Carroll said. “The potential for contamination is diminishing over time.”

The Philadelphia Police Department and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection had also conducted a flyover across the Delaware River and saw no visual evidence of contamination plumes, Carroll said.

“In this case, because we were talking about essentially ingredients that go into latex paint, we would have been able to see a kind of white plume under the river surface,” he said.

The city earlier sent out mobile phone push alerts recommending area residents use of bottled water from 2 p.m.

“Contaminants have not been found in the system at this time but this is out of caution due to a spill in the Delaware River,” the alerts shared with CNN said.

The alert also provided a link to a community website for updates.

But an updated statement Sunday afternoon the city said new hydraulic modeling and sampling results showed “there is no need to buy water at this time.”

“This updated time is based on the time it will take river water that entered the Baxter intakes early Sunday morning to move through treatment and water mains before reaching customers,” the statement reads. “The water that is currently available to customers was treated before the spill reached Philadelphia and remains safe to drink and use for bathing, cooking and washing.”

A ShopRite store in South Philadelphia said it was selling out of bottled water before 2 p.m. Sunday after the alerts were sent out.

When the store is able to restock shelves, it plans to limit cases of bottled water to three per customer, a store worker told CNN.

Carroll said in a statement issued earlier on Sunday that the contamination occurred Friday and involved a latex product that spilled along a Delaware River tributary in Bristol Township, Bucks County.

“As has been reported, on Friday night a chemical spill occurred in Bristol Township, Bucks County which released contaminants into the Delaware River,” Carroll said. “The Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) became aware of this through the Delaware Valley Early Warning System (EWS) and has been evaluating the situation since that time to understand potential impacts to the public. Although early indications have not revealed contamination, we are still monitoring the situation and conducting testing.”

Trinseo PLC, which owns the facility where the spill occurred, said in a statement on its website Sunday it “appears to be the result of equipment failure.”

The latex product chemical spill happened on Friday evening at a facility in Bristol, Pennsylvania, which manufactures acrylic resins, according to the statement.

The company estimated 8,100 gallons of solution – which is half water and half latex polymer – was spilled.

“The latex emulsion is a white liquid that is used in various consumer goods. Its pigmentation makes the water-soluble material visible in surface water,” the statement reads.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said an “unknown amount” of the spilled product had entered the Delaware River. Water sampling is ongoing and contaminants have not been detected at drinking water intakes, the department said in a Sunday statement.

Fish and wildlife are said to have not been affected, according to the statement.

“Since the first hours after the incident, the Department of Environmental Protection has been at the facility where the spill originated and will be staying until there is no longer a threat to those impacted in Bucks and Philadelphia counties,” the department’s acting secretary Rich Negrin said in the statement. “We are working closely with our partners to monitor the spread of the contaminants and we will hold the responsible party accountable.”

On its website, the Philadelphia Water Department said it provides water to more than “2 million people in Philadelphia, Montgomery, Delaware, and Bucks counties.”

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March 26, 2023
As the West’s drought eases, this area remains in the worst on record — and it’s hitting farmers hard | CNN

CNN
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Cate Casad started noticing the for-sale signs pop up over the last year on farms around Central Oregon, which has been mired in water shortages amid a yearslong megadrought.

Casad and her husband, Chris, are first-generation farmers and ranchers who started off with just a few acres of land east of Bend, then moved north in 2017 to scale up their farm. Now, the couple manages around 360 acres of farmland in Jefferson County, where they grow organic food and raise cattle, heritage breed hogs and pastured chickens.

Only a year after that move, they started experiencing the impact of the drought and water cuts so severe that they made the tough decision to stop growing potatoes — a valuable crop that took them nine years to build a local market for.

But while Casad is determined to keep farming, neighboring farms have decided to cut their losses and sell land.

“It’s devastating,” Casad told CNN. “Each year since then, we’ve been cutting back more and more and more to the point in which last year was the worst year yet — and this year, we think will be very similar.”

As much-needed winter storms alleviate drought conditions in California and southern parts of Oregon, the deluge of snow and rain in the West largely missed Central Oregon, leaving Crook, Jefferson and Deschutes counties dry. And many of the farmers in this area don’t have priority rights to the water – putting their farms at heightened risk of failure.

Around the peak of the western drought in the summer of 2021, nearly 300,000 square miles of the West was in exceptional drought, the worst designation in the US Drought Monitor. Comprising 10 states — every state in the West except Wyoming — this designation covered one-quarter of all the land.

But now the exceptional drought has nearly disappeared after a winter deluge of rain and snow — all except for about 1,500 square miles, nearly all contained in Crook County. It has spent 87 consecutive weeks mired in the worst drought category — the longest current stretch anywhere in the country.

Oregon state climatologist Larry O’Neill said Crook missed out on a full year’s worth of rain over the last three years and “by several different measures” has seen the worst drought in Oregon’s recorded history.

“What we’re seeing now is this really poor water supply and how we haven’t really had any recharge in the last couple years,” O’Neill said. “Even if you stretch back to the year 2000 in that region of Central Oregon, 16 out of the last 22 years have received below-average precipitation.”

Seth Crawford, a county judge in Crook, said most of the ranches and farms there rely on reservoir water, “and those reservoirs levels are at historic lows.” Farmers are seeing reductions in harvest yields and have had to shift to crops that require less water, which tend to be less valuable. And then their expenses pile up.

“Our ranchers and farmers have had to sell livestock which will result in a negative effect on their bottom line,” Crawford told CNN, and they “are hauling water to locations where, historically, livestock water was provided by springs and pond. In addition to the issues that farmers and ranchers deal with, our rural residents are needing assistance in well-deepening and water quality.”

The impact of the last remaining exceptional drought in the West spreads beyond Crook County’s borders. Early this year, officials in both Crook and Jefferson counties declared a drought emergency for the fourth year in a row, and two months earlier than last year.

After weeks of urging from local officials, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek in mid-February declared a state-level drought emergency for the counties, which could open the door for federal drought-relief funds.

“If things don’t course correct, we’re on a path to see a massive rural depopulation of these areas, because it can’t farm without water,” Casad said.

Spring Alaska Schreiner, who is Inupiaq and a member of the Valdez Native Tribe of Alaska, bought a few acres in Deschutes County just 20 minutes outside of Bend in 2018.

Schreiner’s tribal name, Upingaksraq, means “the time when the ice breaks” — fitting, considering during her first year of owning Sakari Farm, hail storms destroyed the greenhouses and the plants inside. Then in 2020, the megadrought intensified.

“As soon as we got the farm, [during] the first year, the climate had changed,” she told CNN. “We were seeing winters occurring later in the season. Like right now, we’re finally getting some snow but it’s March almost, and that’s just weird.”

In 2021, reservoir levels in Central Oregon began to drop. Crescent Lake, which supplements water storage for the creek that Schreiner’s irrigation district pulls water from, dropped to 50% of capacity that year, which was the record lowest level at the time. That year, Sakari Farm and the rest of the junior water right holders like Casad started facing water cuts.

With just half of its normal water allocation and later, the water being shut off biweekly, Schreiner said the farm — which grows native plants and seeds from Indigenous peoples which are then donated to other tribes — had to remove crops.

“We can’t not water for a week because we had anywhere between 80 and 130 varieties of plants — it’s a very unique vegetable farm,” she said. “So, what we did was we started shutting off water in parts of the farm and we had to prioritize which crops to grow or to let die, basically.”

As of Friday, Crescent Lake was only 9% full. And given the measly amount of precipitation the region has received in recent months, the impacts of the drought are still strongly felt at Schreiner’s farm. But she said the farm has had to be creative to stay afloat during the drought, including controlling what and how much is grown, who gets its food and how it rations water and food resources.

And with the help of some federal funding from the US Department of Agriculture, she plans to switch the whole farm to drip irrigation, a method that delivers water more directly to the roots of plants and can reduce water waste from evaporation and runoff. She’s also looking to install weather stations and water sensors to gather data that will help the farm improve plant growth efficiency.

“We’re doing everything we can this year, and there’s nothing else you can do,” Schreiner said. “After that, you just start taking more crops away, which is income.”

Sakari Farm has had to remove several crop varieties due to drying soil and lack of water in the region. (Studio XIII/Sakari Farm)

The farm grows native plants and traditional indigenous foods. (Studio XIII/Sakari Farm)

Watching family-run farms suffer — and then ultimately sell their land — weighs heavily on Casad. Even some of the oldest homesteads in Oregon, she said, are exploring plans to put their farms up for sale due to water scarcity.

“There are some days that weight can feel heavier than others,” Casad said. And while she attributes these dire water challenges to the drought, she also blames the century-old water laws.

Like the drought-plagued Colorado River Basin, Oregon water laws are based on seniority – those who were among the first to claim land or water rights have priority over those that followed.

“While we’re all experiencing drought, not all drought is equal due to this 100-year-old Western water law that’s been put in place and hasn’t been changed, and that’s serving people very inequitably,” Andrea Smith, agricultural support manager with High Desert Food and Farm Alliance, told CNN. “But it is a system we’re dealt and working with right now – and there’s a lot we have to do to change it.”

While Crook County may be driest county in Oregon, the system is such that junior water right holders like Casad and Schreiner, in Jefferson and Deschutes counties, get the short end of the stick.

But even Crook County ranchers, some of which Smith said do hold senior rights, are struggling with water scarcity. Casad said she has spoken with ranchers there who have had to haul water to their cattle because the springs have yet to fully return and make up for the yearslong water deficit.

Others, according to Casad, have packed up and moved to Eastern Oregon, where the conditions are becoming more viable than their old land.

Natalie Danielson, the administrative director at Friends of Family Farmers, said she believes the main water scarcity issue is the unfair distribution of water. If the 100-year-old system changes, she said there may be enough water for everyone in Central Oregon.

“We’re kind of at this turning point where there may be enough water, but we are locked in systems that don’t allow for getting that water to the people who need it,” Danielson told CNN. The drought just puts “more pressure on the system that wasn’t set up to be resilient in these conditions.”

As the climate crisis creates a hotter and drier future in the West, Casad said people need to start rethinking how land is managed, while preparing to make tough and painful decisions.

Farmers have always been incredibly resilient, Casad said. “This is not the first time we have faced insane climactic challenges and it won’t be the last.”

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March 4, 2023
Ohio governor drinks the tap water as the EPA demands Norfolk Southern manage all cleanup of a toxic train wreck — or face consequences | CNN

CNN
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The US Environmental Protection Agency is ordering Norfolk Southern to handle and pay for all necessary cleanup after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio.

The EPA announced its legally binding order Tuesday, 18 days after the freight train derailed. The disaster ignited a dayslong inferno, shot plumes of black smoke into the air and led to the intentional release of vinyl chloride to help avert a more catastrophic blast.

Some residents have reported health problems, and about 3,500 fish have died in Ohio waterways since the wreck.

“Norfolk Southern will pay for cleaning the mess that they created and the trauma that they inflicted on this community,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said Tuesday.

As part of the EPA’s legally binding order, Norfolk Southern will be required to:

• Identify and clean up any contaminated soil and water resources,

• Reimburse the EPA for cleaning services to be offered to residents and businesses to provide an additional layer of reassurance, which will be conducted by EPA staff and contractors,

• Attend and participate in public meetings at the EPA’s request and post information online, and

• Pay for the EPA’s costs for work performed under the order.

The order will take effect Thursday. The EPA said it will exercise its strongest authority against the train’s operator under CERCLA – the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act.

“In no way, shape or form will Norfolk Southern get off the hook for the mess that they created,” Regan said.

If the rail company fails to meet the demands, the EPA said it will immediately step in, conduct the necessary work and then seek to compel Norfolk Southern to pay triple the cost.

In response to the EPA’s announcement, Norfolk Southern said it has been working to clean up the site and will continue helping residents.

“We recognize that we have a responsibility, and we have committed to doing what’s right for the residents of East Palestine,” Norfolk Southern said in a statement to CNN.

“We have been paying for the clean-up activities to date and will continue to do so. We are committed to thoroughly and safely cleaning the site, and we are reimbursing residents for the disruption this has caused in their lives. We are investing in helping East Palestine thrive for the long-term, and we will continue to be in the community for as long as it takes. We are going to learn from this terrible accident and work with regulators and elected officials to improve railroad safety.”

Hours before the EPA’s announcement, Regan and Gov. Mike DeWine visited an East Palestine home and tried to reassure residents that the municipal water supply is safe.

They raised two glasses filled with water straight from the tap and toasted before drinking.

The municipal water supply comes from five wells deep underground that are encased in steel, state officials have said. But residents with private well water should get that water tested before using it, since that water may be sourced closer to the ground’s surface.

“State and local authorities will continue the water sampling efforts, and EPA will continue indoor air screenings to residents within the evacuation zone,” Regan said Tuesday.

But “I recognize that no matter how much data we collect or provide, it will not be enough to completely reassure everybody,” the EPA chief said.

“It may not be enough to restore the sense of safety and security that this community once had. But we’re going to work together, day by day, for as long as it takes to make sure that this community feels at home once again.”

The soil under the railroad track at the site of the wreck is still contaminated, and the tracks need to be lifted to remove that soil, the director of Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday.

The governor acknowledged residents’ concerns about the contaminated soil and said 4,588 cubic yards of soil and 1.1 million gallons of contaminated water have been removed from East Palestine.

“The railroad got the tracks back on and started running and the soil under the tracks had not been dealt with,” DeWine said. “The tracks will have to be taken up, and that soil will have to be removed.”

To address the growing reports of rashes, headaches, nausea and other symptoms in East Palestine, the state opened a new health clinic for residents.

The health clinic will have registered nurses, mental health specialists and – at times – a toxicologist, the Ohio Department of Health said.

Medical teams from the US Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention and the US Department of Health are expected to arrive in the community as early as this week to help assess what dangers might remain.

Authorities have repeatedly assured residents that the air and municipal water supply in the town are safe. Crews have checked hundreds of homes and have not detected any dangerous levels of contaminants, the EPA said.

Still, life in East Palestine has been uprooted as residents question the findings and wonder whether it’s really safe to drink the water or breathe the air.

“It will be important to monitor people’s health and the environment around the train derailment for some time to come since health impacts may not emerge until later,” said Dr. Erin Haynes, an environmental health scientist at the University of Kentucky.

“We should never say we’re done looking at this community for potential exposures and health impacts.”

Some waterways were contaminated after the crash, killing an estimated 3,500 fish. But officials have said they believe those contaminants have been contained.

Norfolk Southern installed booms and dams to restrict the flow of contaminated water from Sulphur Run and Leslie Run – two streams where fish were found dead, the EPA said.

“The spill did flow to the Ohio River during that initial slug, but the Ohio River is very large, and it’s a water body that’s able to dilute the pollutants pretty quickly,” Ohio Environmental Protection Agency official Tiffani Kavalec said last week.

Kavalec said the agency is pretty confident that the “low levels” of contaminants that remain are not getting passed on to water customers.

A series of pumps have been placed upstream to reroute Sulphur Run around the derailment site, Norfolk Southern said Monday.

“Environmental teams are treating the impacted portions of Sulphur Run with booms, aeration, and carbon filtration units,” Norfolk Southern added. “Those teams are also working with stream experts to collect soil and groundwater samples to develop a comprehensive plan to address any contamination that remains in the stream banks and sediment.”

Water intakes from the Ohio River that were shut off Sunday “as a precautionary measure” were reopened after sampling found “no detections of the specific chemicals from the train derailment,” the Greater Cincinnati Water Works and Northern Kentucky Water District said Monday.

A third utility provider – Maysville utility in Kentucky – announced that it temporarily shut off water intakes from the Ohio River on Saturday, when the toxic chemicals released into the river from the derailment were expected to arrive at the water treatment intake in Kentucky, utility general manager Mark Julian said.

Water measurements have been below the level of concern, Julian said, and Maysville took precautionary measures in temporarily shutting down their Ohio River intake valve due to the public concern.

“The takeaway is that anyone along the Ohio River where the contaminants made their way can breathe a sigh of relief,” he said.

Meanwhile, the majority of the hazardous rail cars remain at the crash site as investigators continue to probe the wreck. But about 15,000 pounds of contaminated soil and 1.1 million gallons of contaminated water have been removed from the scene, Norfolk Southern announced Monday.

The contaminated soil became a point of contention last week after a public document sent to the EPA on February 10 did not list soil removal among completed cleanup activities. It is not yet known what significance or impact the soil that was not removed before the railroad reopened on February 8 will have had on the surrounding areas.

As skepticism spreads about the safety of the air and water, some local businesses say they’ve seen fewer customers.

“Everybody’s afraid … They don’t want to come in and drink the water,” Teresa Sprowls, a restaurant owner in East Palestine, told CNN affiliate WOIO.

A stylist at a hair salon told WOIO there’s no doubt the salon lost business and that customers may be worried about what may be in the water washing their hair.

“I know a lot of our businesses are already suffering greatly because people don’t want to come here,” local greenhouse owner Dianna Elzer told CNN affiliate WPXI.

Her husband, Donald Elzer, echoed her concerns, saying, “It’s devastating. The longer it goes on, the worse it gets.”

Dianna Elzer also worried about longer-term economic impacts to the community.

“Our property values – who is going to want to buy a house here now?” she told WPXI. “It’s going to be a long struggle to get back to where we were.”

As residents call for accountability from both Norfolk Southern and government officials, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he plans to visit East Palestine “when the time is right” – but did not announce a date.

He did announce Monday new efforts by the Department of Transportation to improve rail safety.

“We are accelerating and augmenting our ongoing lines of effort on rail regulation and inspection here at the US DOT, including further regulation on high hazard flammable trains and electronically controlled pneumatic brakes – rules that were clawed back under the previous administration – to the full extent of that we are allowed to under current law, and we will continue using resources from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to fund projects that improve rail safety,” Buttigieg said.

A DOT news release said the agency will continue to press for the “Train Crew Staffing Rule,” which would require a minimum of two crew members during most railroad operations. Norfolk Southern has opposed the proposed rule.

Norfolk Southern has committed millions of dollars’ worth of financial assistance to East Palestine, including $3.4 million in direct financial assistance to families and a $1 million community assistance fund, among other aid, the company said.

Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw posted an open letter telling East Palestine residents, “I hear you” and “we are here and will stay here for as long as it takes to ensure your safety and to help East Palestine recover and thrive.”

“Together with local health officials,” Shaw said, “we have implemented a comprehensive testing program to ensure the safety of East Palestine’s water, air, and soil.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the first name of Ohio Environmental Protection Agency official Tiffani Kavalec.

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February 21, 2023
Residents not yet allowed to return to homes near site of fiery train derailment in Ohio | CNN

CNN
—

Residents of the Ohio village of East Palestine remain unable to return home after a controlled release Monday of a toxic chemical from cars that were part of a train derailment three days ago, Mayor Trent Conaway said during an evening news conference.

An operation to drain vinyl chloride – a chemical that officials said was unstable and could explode – from five Norfolk Southern rail cars began just after 4:30 p.m. ET.

Scott Deutsch of Norfolk Southern had earlier said small, shaped charges would be used to blow a small hole in each rail car. The vinyl chloride would then spill into a trench where flares would ignite and burn it away.

As of 7 p.m., the flames were reduced and a small fire continues in the pit, Deutsch said at the news conference.

It is “still an ongoing event so we just ask everybody to stay out,” the mayor said. “We have to wait to the fires die down.”

An evacuation zone of 1 mile around the train’s crash site remains in place, Conaway said. Authorities will reassess the zone Tuesday morning, he added. “We really don’t have a time frame right now” for the return of residents, he said.

A team from the Environmental Protection Agency will monitor the air and water quality in the area, officials said.

The remaining fires will go out on their own and won’t be extinguished by crews, Deutsch said.

The five cars from the train, which derailed in a fiery accident Friday, were hurling toxic fumes into the air and shooting deadly shrapnel as far as a mile away, officials said earlier.

One rail car in particular had been a focus of concern because its malfunctioning safety valves had prevented the car from releasing the vinyl chloride inside, a Columbiana County Emergency Management Agency official and a Norfolk Southern spokesperson told CNN earlier Monday.

Ahead of the controlled release, the evacuation zone surrounding the fiery derailment site expanded to two states, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said.

DeWine and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro had ordered evacuations for a 1-mile-by-2-mile area surrounding East Palestine, a village of about 5,000 people near the Pennsylvania border, DeWine said.

This followed evacuations that took place just after the massive inferno began Friday night.

According to East Palestine resident Eric Whiting, police knocked on his door about an hour after the derailment and asked the family to evacuate.

“They told me they didn’t know anything yet, but they just needed us to evacuate,” Whiting told CNN.

Officials begged residents for several days to leave the area as fears about air and water quality have mounted.

Mayor Conaway said Monday he was “proud of the citizens” as everyone cleared out when officials went door-to-door and there were no arrests.

Here’s the latest on the ground:

• Police shift communications hub: The scene was so dangerous by Monday morning that the East Palestine Police Department had evacuated a communications center for safety reasons, a spokesperson told CNN by phone Monday. “911 service will not be affected,” the department posted online.

• Schools are closed: The East Palestine City School District will be closed for the rest of the week, citing a local state of emergency.

• A mechanical issue was detected: The crew was alerted by an alarm shortly before the derailment “indicating a mechanical issue,” a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member said. An emergency brake was applied, but about 10 cars carrying hazardous materials derailed.

Whiting, the East Palestine resident, said he, his wife and three children took nothing with them when they evacuated Friday.

“We live right by the railroad, so we heard the train come to an abrupt stop. But by the time I got dressed to check out what was happening, I heard emergency vehicles rushing towards us,” Whiting told CNN on Monday.

The family returned home Saturday and stayed overnight. But law enforcement officers knocked on the door Sunday morning telling them to leave due to the potential for an explosion.

So, they packed up clothes for a few nights and, along with their dog, headed to a hotel 20 minutes away.

“It’s difficult. I’m in a cheap motel because I’m afraid of how much they’ll be willing to reimburse me for. It’s hard to take my laptop out (to work) and focus when I’m worried about getting food for the family throughout the day,” Whiting said.

He’s also worried what the environmental impact on East Palestine will be, he said.

A “drastic change” was detected Sunday related to the vinyl chloride, Fire Chief Keith Drabick said.

Breathing high levels of vinyl chloride can make someone pass out or die if they don’t get fresh air, the Ohio Department of Health said.

The man-made chemical used to make PVC burns easily at room temperature; can cause dizziness, sleepiness and headaches; and has been linked to an increased risk of cancer in the liver, brain, lungs and blood.

“If a water supply is contaminated, vinyl chloride can enter household air when the water is used for showering, cooking, or laundry,” the National Cancer Institute says.

While air and water quality remained stable Sunday, “things can change at any moment,” James Justice of the EPA’s Emergency Response warned.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “Vinyl chloride in water or soil evaporates rapidly if it is near the surface. Vinyl chloride in the air breaks down in a few days, resulting in the formation of several other chemicals including hydrochloric acid, formaldehyde, and carbon dioxide.”

The agency also warns that liquid vinyl chloride that touches skin will numb it and produce redness and blisters.

There was a mechanical failure warning before the crash, NTSB Member Michael Graham said Sunday. About 10 of 20 cars carrying hazardous materials – among more than 100 cars in all – derailed, the agency said.

“The crew did receive an alarm from a wayside defect detector shortly before the derailment, indicating a mechanical issue,” Graham said. “Then an emergency brake application initiated.”

Investigators also identified the point of derailment and found video showing “preliminary indications of mechanical issues” on one of the railcar axles, Graham said.

NTSB is still investigating when the potential defect happened and the response from the crew, which included an engineer, conductor and conductor trainee, Graham added.

Investigators have also requested records from Norfolk Southern, including track inspection records, locomotive and railcar inspections and maintenance records, train crew records and qualifications, Graham said.

Rail travel is recognized as the safest method of transporting hazardous materials in the US, according to the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration.

“The vast majority of hazardous materials shipped by rail tank car every year arrive safely and without incident, and railroads generally have an outstanding record in moving shipments of hazardous materials safely,” the administration said.

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February 6, 2023
Ohio train continues burning days after derailment as officials say air, water quality remain safe for now | CNN

CNN
—

Officials continued on Sunday to monitor the environmental impact caused by a derailed train carrying hazardous materials late Friday in East Palestine, Ohio, a crash that led to a large inferno that continues to burn, evacuations, a shelter-in-place order and concerns about air quality.

Trent Conaway, the mayor of East Palestine, assured residents the air and drinking water remain safe after the Norfolk Southern train crash. He said classes at East Palestine schools would be canceled Monday, as would city meetings.

The train derailed in East Palestine, about 15 miles south of Youngstown, Friday evening, according to earlier comments by officials. Of the more than 100 cars, about 20 were carrying hazardous materials, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident.

Ten of those cars derailed, including five that were carrying vinyl chloride, the NTSB said in a statement Saturday. The agency said so far it had “not confirmed vinyl chloride has been released other than from the pressure release devices.”

While air and water quality remained stable Sunday, and officials have yet to see abnormal levels in screenings, “things can change at any moment,” said James Justice, an on-scene coordinator with the EPA’s Emergency Response.

Authorities continue to monitor for a “long list” of chemicals, he said – not only those provided to authorities in a list from Norfolk Southern, but also those that can result from combustion.

Officials issued a shelter-in-place order for the entire town of roughly 5,000 people, and an evacuation order was issued for the area within a mile radius of the train crash near James Street.

Both restrictions remained in place Sunday, Conaway said at a news conference. Fire Chief Keith Drabkick told reporters at the news conference the scene remained volatile, preventing authorities from conducting on-scene operations. Crews will not be able to determine the full list of chemicals involved until the fires stops burning, Drabkick said.

Officials urged residents to follow the shelter-in-place orders. On Saturday evening, one person was arrested for misconduct after approaching the scene and getting too close to the train, the mayor said.

“Please stay home. I can’t reiterate it enough,” Conaway said. “Do not come to our town.”

The Ohio EPA is monitoring water quality in local streams, which eventually feed into the Ohio River, a spokesperson said, but the agency does not anticipate contamination to East Palestine’s public water system, which draws from other sources.

The agency installed containment dams in area streams and set up three aeration locations using high volume pumps to treat water and remove dissolved contaminants.

In an email to CNN Sunday morning, a spokesperson for Norfolk Southern deferred all questions to the NTSB.

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February 5, 2023
Faucets in McCarthy’s district are running dry after years of drought. Constituents want him to do more | CNN Politics

CNN
—

Shortly after Benjamin Cuevas and his family moved into their new home three years ago in Tooleville, California, he realized something was horribly wrong.

In the middle of the day, the water pressure would drop completely. Cranking up both hot and cold could only coax a little drip out of the faucet.

Then there was the water itself, contaminated with chemicals from agriculture runoff and treated with so much chlorine that it turned his family’s black clothing gray in the wash. His daughter and her baby live in the house, and Cuevas’s wife only bathes her granddaughter in the bottled water they receive from the county for drinking.

Cuevas is not alone; the entire town of under 300 people faces the same water crisis. In many rural parts of the state, faucets and community wells are running dry after years of drought and heavy agriculture use pulls more water from the same groundwater residents use.

One local nonprofit told CNN that about 8,000 people in the San Joaquin Valley need thousands of gallons of hauled water just to keep their taps flowing – and that number is growing.

Newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has represented Tooleville for the past decade – though the small town is just outside his newly redrawn congressional district. The Republican lawmaker has long represented Kern and Tulare counties, and his redrawn seat adds portions of Fresno County.

Throughout his tenure, this region of California has spent more time than any other part of the country in exceptional drought – the US Drought Monitor’s most severe category – a drought scientists say has been made more intense by human-caused climate change. Recent rainfall has put a dent in the region’s surface drought, though experts have told CNN it will do little to solve the ongoing groundwater shortage.

Tulare, Kern and Fresno counties have endured more than 200 weeks in exceptional drought over the past decade, according to Drought Monitor data.

Multiple people CNN spoke to for this story said McCarthy and his office don’t often engage on this issue in the district, especially compared with neighboring members of Congress. And they wish he would do more with his power in Washington – especially now that he holds the speaker’s gavel.

McCarthy proposed an amendment this past summer to set up a grant program to help connect small towns like Tooleville with larger cities that have better water systems. The measure passed the House but died in the Senate. But as more and more wells go dry, McCarthy has made a point to vote against other bills addressing climate change and drought, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law.

“In my experience, he has never engaged with us on any of these kinds of emergencies,” said Jessi Snyder, the director of community development at local nonprofit Self-Help Enterprises, who focuses on getting hauled water to entire communities that have gone dry.

In a statement to CNN, McCarthy’s office said he has been “a staunch advocate on water issues in the Central Valley and California” since he was first elected to the House. McCarthy has joined his colleagues to “introduce broad legislative solutions every Congress related to this topic since our water situation continues to worsen,” his spokesperson Brittany Martinez said.

But McCarthy does not mention climate change when talking about his district’s drought, and his office did not respond to questions from CNN about whether he believes climate change is playing a role. Instead, he often blames the drought on state mismanagement of water and has called for new and larger dams and reservoirs to be built to capture rainwater during wet years.

Water experts in California say that’s missing the new reality.

“Part of what’s happening now is the reality that there is no more new water,” said Peter Gleick, co-founder and senior fellow of California-based water nonprofit Pacific Institute. “The knee-jerk response of politicians has always been build another dam; find more water. There is no new reservoir that’s going to magically solve these problems. It’s now a question of managing demand.”

When a call comes in from yet another community whose well has run dry, it’s a race against time for the staff at Self-Help Enterprises.

The Visalia, California-based nonprofit has a self-imposed deadline of just 24 hours to drive out to the impacted community with emergency tanks to keep water flowing for showers, laundry and cleaning, as well as with five-gallon jugs of higher-quality water for drinking.

“The team goes all hands-on deck,” Tami McVay, Self-Help’s director of emergency services, told CNN. “Everybody knows what their role is, and they just go get it done. And we move forward to the next one.”

These days, there’s always a next one. Snyder said the summer of 2022 marked “a new level of crisis” as entire small communities of 80 to 100 homes started running out of water, in addition to individual homes.

“It’s been a real struggle because it’s hard to provide a backup source of water to a whole community instead of one household,” she said.

More than 1,400 wells were reported dry last year, according to the state of California, a 40% increase over the same period in 2021. Self-Help staff see this in person on the ground. New families are flowing into their hauled water program, but none are leaving. During the dry, warm-weather months, McVay estimates her nonprofit fields around 100 calls a day, dropping down to about 30 per week in the winter months.

The punishing multi-year drought is what Brad Rippey, a meteorologist at the US Department of Agriculture, calls California’s “latest misery.” California has spent eight of the last 11 years in drought, with the last three years being the driest such period on record, state officials said in October. Human-caused climate change – which is raising global temperatures and making much-needed rain and snow less frequent in the West – is contributing to the severity, Rippey said.

“The impacts are multiplying. You have these droughts piling on top of droughts with cumulative impacts,” including wildfires, he added.

To supplement the dwindling groundwater supply in Tooleville, officials in Tulare County and nonprofits like Self-Help deliver five-gallon water jugs to the residents for drinking and 16,000 gallons of hauled water into tanks for washing their clothes, doing dishes and taking showers.

There’s so much demand in the warm months for the hauled water that a 16,000-gallon delivery lasted some communities just a few hours before needing to be refilled, Snyder said.

“We literally cannot pump the water out of the tanker trucks fast enough to fill the storage tanks,” she added. “We can’t ever get ahead of it; physics is against us. It’s nuts and really stressful.”

California’s extreme heat wave this summer pushed water usage even higher as residents watered grass and farms pumped more for crops. In Tooleville, Cuevas watched as the orange and lemon trees in his yard withered and died. Outdoor watering restrictions meant he couldn’t save his trees, even as some of his neighbors flouted the restrictions with noticeably green lawns.

“Everything just perished,” Cuevas said. “It’s not a good feeling to see other people enjoying [the water], while you’re doing your part.”

Seeing the nearby Friant-Kern Canal every day – which carries melted snowpack water from Northern California to Central Valley farms – is a nagging reminder of what his family doesn’t have.

“It’s terrible,” Cuevas told CNN. “Just joking, I’d say I’ll go out there and put a hose [in it] running right back to my house.”

Tooleville resident Maria Olivera has lived in town since 1974.

Olivera cooks with bottled water.

As Cuevas’s own trees died, commercial farms in the area were still producing – although their future is also uncertain. Farms are also having to drill deeper wells to irrigate orange groves and acres of thirsty pecan and pistachio trees.

With this rush on groundwater, shallow residential wells don’t stand a chance. In West Goshen, a small town that sits outside McCarthy’s district in Tulare County, resident Jesus Benitez told CNN he burned through three well pumps – costing $1,200 a piece – during the warmer months when his neighbor, a farmer who grows alfalfa and corn, started irrigating his crops.

“They’ve got the money to go every time deeper and deeper in the ground; we don’t have that luxury,” Benitez said.

Two town wells in nearby Seville nearly ran dry this summer, said Linda Gutierrez, a lifelong resident who sits on the town’s water board. Across the street from the town’s wells is a pistachio farm, and when they start irrigating, the groundwater level plummets, she said.

But she doesn’t blame the farmers. Like many who live in the area, her husband is a farm worker. There’s a lot of pride in the region’s far-reaching agriculture, and many feel it should be sustained.

“You can’t not have farmers because you need food, but we have to have water in order to survive,” Gutierrez said. “There’s a very tricky balance to establish. Right now, if they don’t irrigate, we have water, but also a year from now we have no food.”

As big of a societal problem as drought and water shortages are, they are also intensely personal. Self-Help’s McVay gets emotional when talking about school children in the area getting beat up because they don’t have clean clothes or ready access to a shower.

“They don’t have water in their homes to take baths, or brush their teeth, or have clean laundry, and they’re getting bullied,” she said. “Being made fun of because they’re taking baths at the local gas station bathroom. It’s not fair – the stress that it causes the parents because [they] start to feel like they’re failing as a parent.”

Multiple local and state elected officials and leaders of nonprofits focusing on water delivery in the San Joaquin Valley said McCarthy isn’t engaged enough on what they consider one of his district’s most dire crises.

McVay said outreach from McCarthy’s office on dry residential wells is “slim to none, and I am not saying that to discredit them at all.”

“I have had more conversations, more engagement and just more wanting to know how they can assist from Congressman Valadao and his office than probably any other on the federal side,” McVay added.

Snyder said Rep. David Valadao, a Republican representing neighboring Kings County as well as portions of Tulare and Kern, and his staff “will show up in a community at the time of a crisis” and are actively engaged on how they can support efforts to get people water.

Other members of Congress, including Democratic Rep. Jim Costa and Republican Connie Conway, who left office earlier this month, have also been more accessible and engaged on the issue, Snyder said.

“Kevin McCarthy, no,” Snyder added.

While McCarthy is popular in his district and influential among California and Central Valley Republicans, California state Sen. Melissa Hurtado, a Democrat who represents parts of the San Joaquin Valley plagued by drought, told CNN there are concerns that McCarthy’s ambition for House speaker has superseded his district’s needs.

“He’s focused on that leadership position instead of actually working on issues to address the impacts of his district,” Hurtado told CNN. “Quietly, the word out there is it’s been a while that he’s actually delivered something for the region, given his focus on the leadership position. Maybe that’s part of his greater vision for helping this region out.”

McCarthy’s office did not respond to questions about how he’ll use his position as House speaker to address climate change-fueled droughts in California and around the nation. Nor did it respond to the critiques about his lack of engagement.

“The Leader has consistently worked in a bipartisan, bicameral fashion to deliver this life-giving resource for the families, agriculture producers and workers, and communities in the Central Valley and throughout California, and our Republican congressional delegation heavily relies on his steadfast leadership and decades of expertise when crafting their own pieces of water legislation,” McCarthy’s spokesperson Martinez told CNN in a statement. “When Democrats have held the majority, they time and time again blocked the progress and innovation of their House GOP colleagues.”

In July, McCarthy spoke on the House floor about Tooleville’s plight, seeking to set up a federal grant program to help connect it and other small towns to larger cities’ water supply.

“In our district, the community of Tooleville has run out of water as the groundwater table drops and aging infrastructure fails or becomes obsolete,” McCarthy said at the time. “Tulare County advises me that if California’s droughts continue, more small and rural communities in our district with older infrastructure could meet the exact same fate.”

McCarthy’s measure authorized a grant program but didn’t contain any funding. And even though the bill passed the House, it died in the Senate, and it’s unclear whether it will come up again in the new Congress.

Connecting Tooleville’s water infrastructure with that of nearby Exeter has been a decadeslong pursuit that is finally close to happening thanks to a state mandate and funding. The project will mean more reliable and cleaner water for residents like Cuevas. But it’s expected to take eight years for the two systems to fully merge.

McCarthy is also co-sponsoring a bill with Valadao that would enlarge certain reservoirs and kickstart construction on a new reservoir in the Sacramento Valley. But some nonprofit leaders and local officials say these solutions would prioritize agriculture over residents.

“We need more solutions beyond storage and dams,” said Susana De Anda, executive director of the San Joaquin Valley-based environmental justice nonprofit Community Water Center. “[McCarthy] lacks understanding of the real critical problems we’re experiencing around the drought and our communities.”

Seeking to attract younger voters concerned about climate change to the Republican Party, McCarthy last year convened a Climate, Energy and Conservation Task Force to develop the party’s messaging and policies around the issue. And House Republican delegations have attended the last two United Nations climate summits.

But all indications suggest that addressing human-caused climate change is not going to be a focal point of McCarthy’s now that he has the speaker’s gavel. McCarthy and House Republicans have shown they don’t want to move away from planet-warming fossil fuels, and few in the party are willing to connect global temperature rise to worsening droughts and extreme weather.

McCarthy dissolved Democrats’ Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and he has vowed to investigate Department of Energy grants for electric vehicle components, as well as alleged “collusion” between environmental groups and China and Russia to “hurt American Energy,” according to a recent statement.

“Our representatives don’t talk about climate change; it’s a real problem,” De Anda said. “Climate change is real. Our communities are the canaries in the coal mine. We get hit first.”

It’s part of the reason Cuevas is hoping to move away in a couple years. He’s hopeful the water situation will improve by connecting Tooleville to a larger town’s water system; otherwise, he’s afraid he won’t be able to entice another buyer due to the water issues.

“I’m happy I had a chance to buy it, but we are planning to move,” Cuevas told CNN. “Right now, if I try, I ain’t going to get nothing, not even what I paid for the home.”

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January 21, 2023
Justin Bieber launches clean water company Generosity at Qatar’s World Cup | CNN

CNN
—

Justin Bieber is on a mission to make the world’s drinking water more sustainable.

Bieber and Micah Cravalho have evolved bottled water brand Generosity into a water technology company that is providing premium alkaline water in refillable fountains across the globe. They showcased 150 water fountains this month at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Bieber spoke about the brand’s social impact initiative in a statement to CNN.

“I want the world to have access to the best water. I also want countries to know how to best protect their people. The overuse of plastic is hurting us, we need to be more sustainable,” Bieber said.

Generosity is aimed at not just providing premium water but reducing the usage of single-serve plastic.

“We aspire to be the global leader in water technology, empowering consumers with refillable products as an alternative to single-use packaging,” said co-founder Cravalho.

Bieber and Cravalho recently visited Qatar and met with Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the sister of country’s emir.

Having participated in beach clean-up efforts in Qatar for many years, I have witnessed first-hand the effect of pollution on our natural environment. Through initiatives such as those undertaken by Generosity and the Supreme Committee, and projects such as the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Art water bottles, which bring together the global artistic community to advocate for a more sustainable future, we are all encouraged to play our part during the World Cup and beyond,” Al Mayassa said in a press release.

Generosity connects to any water source and is able to create premium refillable alkaline water dispensed through their sustainable fountains which the company says will be found commercially at major venues, festivals and in homes in 2023.

The Grammy Award winner has been at the forefront of social impact initiatives in Hollywood with his involvement in organizations like Pencils of Promise, which builds schools in third world countries. He also raised over $3 million dollars for the First Responders Children’s Foundation with Ariana Grande in 2020 with their “Stuck with U” collaboration.

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December 1, 2022
Wells are running dry in drought-weary Southwest as foreign-owned farms guzzle water to feed cattle overseas | CNN

La Paz County, Arizona
CNN
—

Workers with the water district in Wenden, Arizona, saw something remarkable last year as they slowly lowered a camera into the drought-stricken town’s well: The water was moving.

But the aquifer which sits below the small desert town in the southwestern part of the state is not a river; it’s a massive, underground reservoir which stores water built up over thousands of years. And that water is almost always still.

Gary Saiter, a longtime resident and head of the Wenden Water Improvement District, said the water was moving because it was being pumped rapidly out of the ground by a neighboring well belonging to Al Dahra, a United Arab Emirates-based company farming alfalfa in the Southwest.

Al Dahra did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

“The well guys and I have never seen anything like this before,” Saiter told CNN. The farm was “pumping and it was sucking the water through the aquifer.”

Groundwater is the lifeblood of the rural Southwest, but just as the Colorado River Basin is in crisis, aquifers are rapidly depleting from decades of overuse, worsening drought and rampant agricultural growth.

Residents and farms pull water from the same underground pools, and as the water table declines, the thing determining how long a well lasts is how deeply it was drilled.

Now frustration is growing in Arizona’s La Paz County, as shallower wells run dry amid the Southwest’s worst drought in 1,200 years. Much of the frustration is pointed at the area’s huge, foreign-owned farms growing thirsty crops like alfalfa, which ultimately get shipped to feed cattle and other livestock overseas.

“You can’t take water and export it out of the state, there’s laws about that,” said Arizona geohydrologist Marvin Glotfelty, a well-drilling expert. “But you can take ‘virtual’ water and export it; alfalfa, cotton, electricity or anything created in part from the use of water.”

Residents and local officials say lax groundwater laws give agriculture the upper hand, allowing farms to pump unlimited water as long as they own or lease the property to drill wells into. In around 80% of the state, Arizona has no laws overseeing how much water corporate megafarms are using, nor is there any way for the state to track it.

But rural communities in La Paz County know the water is disappearing beneath their feet.

Shallow, residential wells in the county started drying up in 2015, local officials say, and deeper municipal well levels have steadily declined. In Salome, local water utility owner Bill Farr told CNN his well – which supplies water to more than 200 customers, including the local schools – is “nearing the end of its useful life.”

And in Wenden, water in the town well has been plummeting. Saiter told CNN the depth-to-water – how deep below the surface the top of the water table is – has dropped from about 100 feet in the late 1950s to about 540 feet in 2022, already far beyond what an average residential well can reach. Saiter is anxious the farms’ rapid water use could push the water table too low for the town well to draw safe water from.

La Paz County supervisor Holly Irwin told CNN getting the state to act on – or even acknowledge – the region’s dwindling water supply has been a “frustrating” yearslong battle which has left her community feeling “forgotten.”

Middle East agriculture companies “have depleted their [water], that’s why they are here,” Irwin said. “That’s what angers people the most. We should be taking care of our own, and we just allow them to come in, purchase property and continue to punch holes in the ground.”

In 2018, Saudi Arabia finalized a ban on growing thirsty crops like alfalfa and hay to feed livestock and cattle. The reason was simple: the arid Middle East – also struggling with climate change-fueled drought – is running out of water, and agriculture is a huge consumer.

But vast dairy operations are a point of national pride in the Middle East, according to Eckart Woertz, director of the Germany-based GIGA Institute for Middle East Studies. So, they needed to find water somewhere else.

“They have all their cows there and they need feeding. That feedstock comes from abroad,” Woertz told CNN.

Valued at $14.3 billion, the Almarai Company – which owns about 10,000 acres of farmland in Arizona under its subsidiary, Fondomonte – is one of the biggest players in the Middle East’s dairy supply. The company also owns about 3,500 acres in agriculture-heavy Southern California, according to public land records, where they use Colorado River water to irrigate crops.

Woertz said while most of the company’s cattle feed is purchased on the open market, Alamarai took the extra step of buying farmland abroad, as part of a growing trend in foreign-owned farmland in the US. Foreign-owned farmland in the West increased from around 1.25 million acres in 2010 to nearly three million acres in 2020, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture. In the Midwest, foreign-owned farmland has nearly quadrupled.

“It gives you that sense you’re closer to the source,” Woertz added. “The sense that you own land or lease land somewhere else and have direct bilateral access [to water] gives you a sense of maybe false security.”

In the high desert of Arizona, emerald-green fields stretch for miles alongside dry tumbleweeds and Saguaro cactus.

The Fondomonte-owned Vicksburg Ranch near Salome is massive. The company spent $47.5 million to buy nearly 10,000 acres of land there in 2014, and it leases additional farmland from the state.

Huge storage facilities were erected to hold the harvests. Rows of small houses were built for the farm’s workers, all surrounded by flowering desert shrubs. Tractor trailers filled with bales of alfalfa hay rumble down the highway, which local officials told CNN they had to repair because of the increased agricultural traffic.

The alfalfa on the trucks is eventually shipped to feed cattle in Saudi Arabia.

“They’ve definitely increased production,” Irwin said. “They’ve grown so much since they’ve been here.”

Almarai was transparent about why it wanted the land, according to an article on the purchase from Arab News: The transaction was part of “continuous efforts to improve and secure its supply of the highest quality alfalfa hay from outside the Kingdom to support its dairy business.”

“It is also in line with the Saudi government direction toward conserving local resources,” Arab News added.

Representatives of Fondomonte declined an interview request for this story, but Jordan Rose, the company’s Arizona attorney, provided a statement: “Fondomonte decided to invest in the southwest United States just as hundreds of other agricultural businesses have because of the high-quality soils, and climatic conditions that allow growth of some of the finest quality alfalfa in the world.”

Rose added the farm installed “the most technologically advanced conservation oriented watering systems available on the market.”

Indeed, there is nothing illegal about foreign-owned farming in the US. And many American farmers use the West’s water to grow crops which are eventually exported around the globe.

But amid the worst drought in centuries, residents and officials have questioned the merit of allowing countries, which themselves are running out of water, unlimited access to a resource as good as gold in the Southwest.

Cynthia Campbell, water resources management adviser for the city of Phoenix, has been watching the La Paz County water situation with frustration.

Phoenix currently gets most of its water from local rivers and the Central Arizona Project, which diverts Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson. But it could use rural groundwater as a safety net in the coming years if the city’s primary sources are further restricted.

That is, if there is any groundwater left by then.

“We are literally exporting our economy overseas,” Campbell said. “I’m sorry, but there’s no Saudi Arabian milk coming back to Southern California or Arizona. The value of that agricultural output is not coming through in value to the US.”

Despite the ever-looming water crisis, people are still drawn to small Southwest towns like Wenden and Salome because of the low home prices and the freedom of desert living.

While housing costs in the country rocket upward, rural Arizona has remained a stubbornly affordable place to live. Homes cost between $30,000 and $40,000, and residential taxes paid to the county are below $300 per year, Saiter, the head of Wenden’s water district and a longtime resident, told CNN.

“People are able to afford to live here, versus Phoenix,” Gary’s wife, De Vona Saiter, told CNN. Median incomes in the county are low, “but you can still have a beautiful life.”

The Saiters’ house and rental properties around town – as well as De Vona’s mother Gloria Kaisor’s home down the street – are decorated with hand-drawn art, gardens and antiques.

Kaisor is a longtime resident who first moved to Wenden with her family in the 1960s. After living in Phoenix for years, she gravitated back to the rural area.

“This is home,” Kaisor said. “You don’t hear a noise. It’s quiet. I don’t want to be around a lot of people. You can do whatever you want.”

Yet the impacts of living near a corporate farm are starting to pile up.

Kaisor’s home was inundated with silty, wet mud this summer. Rainfall runoff from a recent monsoon flood carried it from the farm right into Wenden. Gary Saiter believes Al Dahra farm staff have rerouted natural waterways, forcing the rainfall into town rather than out into the desert washes.

Kaisor and her neighbors’ fences are reinforced with sheet metal to try to stop mud and water from coming into their houses, but Kaisor was trapped in her house during a storm earlier this year.

“The whole property was full of mud,” De Vona Saiter said.

Al Dahra did not respond to CNN’s questions for this story, including questions about its water usage, the uptick in residential flooding and potential rerouting of natural waterways.

The company did provide a statement to the Arizona Republic for a story published in 2019: “Water resources in Arizona must be managed wisely in order to preserve our quality of life and to protect the state’s economic health,” Al Dahra said. “The company is fully committed to Arizona and plans to remain here for the long-term.”

Living near the Al Dahra farm also brings more frequent and alarming drought-related impacts.

When it gets windy, a “dirt wall” of soil and dust whips up from the alfalfa fields, exacerbating the Saiters’ allergies. And most noticeably, the ground is literally sinking as the water below the surface gets pumped out.

The floor in De Vona’s shop has sunk a couple inches, she said, and the ground around one well casing has sunk about a foot; so much the wellhead needed to be cut and resized.

With all of this, Gary Saiter doesn’t care if the farm is owned by a company overseas. The way he sees it, it doesn’t make much of a difference who owns the farm; he just wishes they were better neighbors.

“I am kind of ambivalent about the Saudis,” Saiter said. “You can’t control where people sell stuff, and it’s going to go somewhere.”

“I just don’t like the crops they’re growing and the water they’re pumping,” he added.

Kari Avila, superintendent and athletics director for Salome High School, believes the farms are providing local economic benefits. Rose, Fondomonte’s Arizona attorney, told CNN in an email the company is the fourth-largest employer in the county.

“They employ a lot of people,” Avila told CNN. “If they weren’t farming it, someone else would be. A lot of people are upset it’s not Americans farming.”

Avila praised the farms for their internship programs and career fairs. Last year, Al Dahra donated an irrigation pump and generator to water Salome’s high school fields, which had been drying up. Avila said the pump installation for the field was fast and took just a few weeks.

But even as the companies are trying to invest in the area, many still question whether those benefits are worth it as water disappears.

“It’s great,” Irwin, the La Paz County supervisor said, “but if you can’t turn your faucet on in five years, that sh*t’s not going to matter.”

The reason some rural residents feel powerless about the fate of their groundwater is because they say Arizona’s state lawmakers have thus far not acted to protect it.

The last time the state passed regulations around groundwater was in 1980, with a law creating certain zones in mostly urban areas, where officials had to ensure they were replenishing underground aquifers and not pumping them dry.

The laws governing the so-called active management areas, or AMAs, are strong compared to groundwater laws in other Southwest states, said Kathleen Ferris, a former top state water official and senior researcher at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy.

But “outside of the AMAs, not so much,” Ferris told CNN.

About 80% of the state falls outside the active management areas, with no restrictions on how much groundwater can be pumped and no way to monitor it.

“It can’t get any worse” than Arizona’s lack of regulation on rural groundwater, Ferris said. “Let’s put it that way.”

Water officials can measure whether water levels in the aquifers are going up or down, but because groundwater is so lightly regulated in rural areas, they don’t have enough data to answer a crucial question: Exactly how much water is left?

“That is one of the challenges of our state; you can’t manage what you don’t measure,” said top Arizona water official Tom Buschatzke, the director of the state’s Department of Water Resources. “We do the best we can with the data and estimated data that we have, but it really begs questions about how much benefit we can really provide.”

As the West’s water crisis grows more intense, groundwater reform has become a flashpoint in this year’s election campaigns.

Arizona attorney general candidate Kris Mayes, a Democrat, has seized on the state’s practice of leasing public land to corporate farms, including more than 6,000 acres leased to Fondomonte, according to the state land department.

A recent investigation by the Arizona Republic found Fondomonte – the second-largest agricultural lessor of Arizona land – is paying the state a heavily discounted rate which does not take their water usage into account.

Mayes said she thinks the leases violate the state constitution and has vowed to cancel them if she’s elected.

“It shouldn’t have happened in the first place,” Mayes told Irwin in September, standing outside Fondomonte’s farm. “We can get these leases canceled, and we should. We are essentially giving our water away for free to a Saudi corporation, and that has to come to an end.”

The Arizona State Land Department is studying the state’s water resources in western Arizona, department spokesman Bill Fathauer told CNN. But he added it does not have the authority to implement additional groundwater restrictions.

“The comprehensive data determined from these studies will allow the Department to make an informed decision about not only future land use in these areas but also help determine what the future value of the land is as well,” Fathauer said in an email.

The kind of sweeping water reforms Arizona needs must ultimately come from the state legislature, says outgoing state House member Regina Cobb, a Republican.

For years, Cobb tried to advance bills to allow local officials to regulate their aquifers. The bills never got a committee hearing, Cobb said, never mind making it to the floor for a vote. CNN reached out to Gov. Doug Ducey and top Arizona lawmakers in the state House and Senate for comment; none responded.

As the Colorado River shrinks and Arizona’s share of the water continues to be cut, Cobb told CNN the state’s approach to groundwater has been unthinkable.

“Why are we allowing a foreign company to come into Arizona – which is drought-stricken right now – and have a sweetheart deal [on leases], when we are trying to conserve as much water as we can?” she asked.

“It boggles my mind.”

Read more:

The Colorado River provides drinking water and electricity to 40 million people. As its supply dwindles, a crisis looms

As California’s big cities fail to rein in their water use, rural communities are already tapped out

The West’s historic drought is threatening hydropower at Hoover Dam

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November 5, 2022
Not only is Lake Powell’s water level plummeting because of drought, its total capacity is shrinking, too | CNN

CNN
—

Lake Powell, the second-largest human-made reservoir in the US, has lost nearly 7% of its potential storage capacity since 1963, when Glen Canyon Dam was built, a new report shows.

In addition to water loss due to an intense multiyear drought, the US Geological Survey and the Bureau of Reclamation report found, Lake Powell faced an average annual loss in storage capacity of about 33,270 acre-feet, or 11 billion gallons, per year between 1963 and 2018.

That’s enough water to fill the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall about 1,600 times.

The capacity of the reservoir is shrinking because of sediments flowing in from the Colorado and San Juan rivers, according to the report. Those sediments settle at the bottom of the reservoir and decrease the total amount of water the reservoir can hold.

As of Monday, Lake Powell was around 25% full, according to data from the Bureau of Reclamation.

It’s bad news for a region already facing water shortages and extreme wildfires due to the drought. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration drought experts said last week these conditions are expected to at least continue – if not worsen – in the coming months.

Lake Powell is an important reservoir in the Colorado River Basin. Both Lake Powell and nearby Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, have drained at an alarming rate. In August, the federal government declared a water shortage on the Colorado River for the first time after Lake Mead’s water level plunged to unprecedented lows, triggering mandatory water consumption cuts for states in the Southwest that began in January.

And last week, Lake Powell dipped below the critical threshold of 3,525 feet above sea level, sparking additional concerns about water supply and hydropower generation millions of people in the West rely on for electricity.

The significance of the dwindling water supply along the Colorado cannot be overstated.

The system supplies water for more than 40 million people living across seven Western states and Mexico. Lakes Powell and Mead provide a critical supply of drinking water and irrigation for many across the region, including rural farms, ranches and native communities.

“It is vitally important we have the best-available scientific information like this report to provide a clear understanding of water availability in Lake Powell as we plan for the future,” Tanya Trujillo, assistant secretary for water and science with the US Department of Interior, said in a statement. “The Colorado River system faces multiple challenges, including the effects of a 22-year-long drought and the increased impacts of climate change.”

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March 21, 2022