Cities sit unmoving on the landscape — a sprawling collection of roads, sidewalks, and buildings designed to last for generations. But across the United States, urban areas are silently shifting: The land beneath them is sinking, a process known as subsidence, largely because people are using too much groundwater and aquifers are collapsing. The sheer weight of a metropolis, too, compacts the underlying soil.
A new study published on Thursday in the journal Nature Cities mapped the scale of this slow-motion crisis across the country. Researchers used satellites to measure how the elevation has been changing in America’s 28 most populous cities — including New York, Dallas, and Seattle — and found that in every one of them, at least 20 percent of the urban area is sinking. In 25 cities, two-thirds or more of the area is subsiding, with rates up to 0.4 of an inch each year. (In the maps below, red indicates areas where subsidence is fastest.)
Groundwater withdrawal was responsible for 80 percent of total subsidence in the cities. As urban areas grow — and as climate change exacerbates droughts, especially in the American West — their people and industries demand more water. Overall, the study found that across the 28 cities, nearly 7,000 square miles of land is subsiding, threatening 29,000 buildings and potentially affecting 34 million people. Hotspots include Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. “Cities where we have denser population and buildings, we have faster rate of land subsidence, and higher risk of damage,” said Manoochehr Shirzaei, an environmental security expert at Virginia Tech and a coauthor of the paper.
This map of Houston shows the fastest-subsiding areas in red.
Ohenhen, et al., Nature Cities
The country’s fastest-sinking metropolis, Houston, has 40 percent of its area dropping more than a fifth of an inch annually, with another 12 percent of its land subsiding at twice that rate. Parts of the city have already sunk by several feet, the result of decades of people pumping out too much groundwater and too much fossil fuel. Houston already struggles with flooding from hurricanes and rainstorms made worse by climate change, while subsidence creates depressions for all that water to accumulate.
If an urban area sinks at a uniform rate, it might not be much of an issue, since all the infrastructure would be moving together. But the problem, the researchers find, is “differential subsidence,” where the rates differ on a small scale. If one end of a building sinks a quarter of an inch a year, and the other end sinks a third of an inch, the difference will destabilize the building’s foundation.
This map shows New York City.
Ohenhen, et al., Nature Cities
While subsidence of a fraction of an inch each year might not seem like much, the years start to pile up: In just a decade, a city can end up with 6 inches of lost elevation. Parts of California’s water-stressed agricultural regions have dropped by nearly 30 feet, and some places in Mexico City are sinking 20 inches every year. “Subsidence is a silent problem,” said researcher Darío Solano-Rojas, who studies subsidence at the National Autonomous University of Mexico but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “Now that the situation with water scarcity is growing, then it’s like, OK, we need to do something about the water, and in parallel, we do something about subsidence.”
Roads and airports, which stretch for long distances across the landscape, are also at major risk because there’s lots of room for differential subsidence: The study found that New York City’s LaGuardia Airport is sinking a fifth of an inch a year. More troubling still, Shirzaei’s previous research scrutinized other infrastructure on the East Coast and discovered that all 10 levees his team measured were sinking, leaving 46,000 people and $12 billion in property vulnerable. Shirzaei has also found that coastal cities such as Charleston, South Carolina, and areas around Chesapeake Bay are sinking a fifth of an inch a year while sea levels rise the same amount, effectively doubling the inundation.
And finally, Las Vegas
Ohenhen, et al., Nature Cities
Until recently, though, cities have lacked the fine-scale data they need to determine which areas are subsiding, and which buildings and roads might be at risk. “This study just really does the work needed to bring that home, by very systematically assessing this throughout the country and really showing how little we’ve done so far to do anything about this problem,” said Roland Burgmann, a geophysicist who studies subsidence at the University of California, Berkeley but wasn’t involved in the research.
The solution to subsidence is to put water back in the ground, what scientists call managed aquifer recharge, which can reinflate the land. Farmers in California are doing this with excess water during the rainy season so they can pump it back up in times of need. “You’re inherently kind of drawing it down, knowing you can build it back up over time, either through rainfall that’s going to naturally infiltrate and recharge, or through managed aquifer recharge,” said Amanda Fencl, director of climate science for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who wasn’t involved in the research.
So where subsidence is due to the mismanagement of groundwater supplies, it’s also a solvable problem. “With land subsidence, in most cases we have plenty of time,” Shirzaei said, “and we have inexpensive solutions.”
More than two dozen United States Geological Service (USGS) centers that monitor the country’s waters for flooding and drought, as well as manage water supply levels to make sure communities don’t run out, have had their leases terminated by the Trump administration.
The 25 centers being targeted are part of a network that tracks the quality and levels of surface and ground water, reported The Guardian. The data the centers’ employees and equipment provide plays a crucial role in protecting human life and property while maintaining water supplies and helping to clean up oil and chemical spills.
In the aftermath of a chemical or oil spill, USGS data tracks plumes with real-time monitoring in some locations to protect drinking water, Inside Climate News reported.
In parts of California’s Central Valley, so much groundwater has been pumped out of the ground to deal with the region’s persistent drought that the land is starting to sink in. Underground aquifers — layers of sand, gravel, clay, and water — are vital resources that communities can turn to when surface water is scarce. But when more water is pumped out of aquifers than is put back in — as is happening in the southern part of the valley — it can cause the ground to slowly contract, like a drying sponge.
After studying this phenomenon, Rosemary Knight, a professor of geophysics at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, became interested in identifying the fastest ways to replenish California’s groundwater using managed aquifer recharge. This technique involves flooding a piece of land with excess surface water and allowing that water to seep through the ground and into aquifers, where it can be stored for later use. Armed with a massive electromagnetic dataset, Knight and a team of researchers set out to analyze sediment types below the surface in the California Central Valley and map out the quickest routes to refilling aquifers.
Their research, published last month in the journal Earth and Space Science, found that between 2 million and 7 million acres of land in the Central Valley are suitable for recharge — or between 19 and 56 percent of the valley’s total area. Most of the rechargeable land is currently used to grow crops. Many farmers are enthused about the data, according to Knight — and keen to implement it. As climate change continues to exacerbate water challenges in California, her team’s research points to how agricultural producers can help to ensure sustainable water access for all. “They want to be part of the solution,” said Knight.
Since 2000, the U.S. Southwest has been in the driest 25-year period the region has seen in over a millennium, according to researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, who found that climate change has supercharged these dry conditions. Part of the way rising global temperatures exacerbate water challenges is by increasing the evaporation of surface water, or water in rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. Scientists are also eyeing how climate change could impact snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, which forms a critical part of California’s annual water supply every spring as it melts and moves into rivers and streams. In 2015, a multiyear drought in California led to an unprecedented decline in snowpack in the Sierra Nevada; researchers have also predicted that global warming could cause snowlines on the Sierra Nevada to rise towards the end of the century, meaning snow would only form at higher elevations, reducing the overall amount of snow on the mountain range.
Water is critical for the region because the Central Valley is an agricultural powerhouse, producing one-fourth of the nation’s food, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It’s home to more than 250 different crops — from hay and cotton to rice and corn to tomatoes and olives. But the state’s agricultural industry has also been blamed for depleting groundwater while wells run dry in nearby rural communities. Over the past two decades, groundwater levels in California have been steadily falling, despite aquifers being periodically recharged naturally by snowmelt and rainfall, according to a 2022 study in Nature Communications.
“Natural recharge was not keeping pace with the rate of extraction,” said Knight.
A multiyear drought caused water levels to fall in Lake Success, a reservoir in the Central Valley.
Citizens of the Planet / Education Images / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
In order to determine how water would flow through sediments below the ground, Knight and her colleagues used a large set of electromagnetic data acquired by the California Department of Water Resources. The data was collected by helicopters flying over the Central Valley in a grid formation, with flightlines spaced a few miles apart. Using special equipment that sends an electromagnetic signal into the ground, the choppers were able to determine how the current is conducted through layers of soil at a depth of up to 300 meters. Areas full of coarse materials like sand and gravel — where water flows seamlessly — can’t conduct electricity easily.
By interpreting these results, the researchers were able to construct a 3D model of the subsurface and pinpoint “fastpaths” for water to travel down into aquifers.
This kind of information could be vital for regional California agencies, which have been instructed to develop plans for using groundwater more efficiently under the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. The data that Knight and her colleagues produced — which they’ve made available online — can also help agricultural producers decide whether or not to implement groundwater recharge on their lands. Their analysis reveals which specific croplands are best suited for recharging aquifers (like the ones used to grow fruits, nuts, and field crops, as well as vineyards) and which aren’t (those used for rice and citrus).
This level of soil data can help farmers make decisions about whether managed recharge is right for their land. “Growers really want to have confidence that if their land is being flooded for recharge, that water is going to very rapidly move below the ground surface,” said Knight. Better guidance for agricultural producers has already been circulating; the Almond Board of California has been recommending groundwater recharge for a few years now and published an introductory guide for growers.
Christine Gemperle, a longtime almond grower who sits on the Almond Board of California, has flooded one of her orchards twice for groundwater recharge — and said she has seen numerous benefits beyond raising groundwater levels in her area. They include flushing gophers out of her fields (they love her cover crops, Gemperle said) and pushing salts that accumulate from irrigation further down into the soil. Although she wasn’t able to do it this winter, due to dry conditions lowering the amount of surface water available, she feels optimistic that this kind of data can empower other farmers to explore recharge. “There’s so much opportunity,” she said.
Farmer Christine Gemperle stands in her almond orchard.
Yolanda M. James / The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
Like many farmers in the state, Gemperle already had access to canals that transport water from a reservoir to her fields for irrigation. This made recharge fairly straightforward: When she saw the canals were full of water during a particularly wet year, she got permission from her local irrigation district to open the canal gates and flood her land. The prevalence of this kind of infrastructure is an advantage for California farmers interested in recharge, according to Shimon Anisfeld, a professor at the Yale School of the Environment focused on water management who was not involved in Knight’s study.
Managed recharge can provide some “environmental win-wins,” said Anisfeld. When farmers face wet winters and dry summers, recharge can help store excess surface water, making it accessible during the growing season. In certain instances, like when farmlands are restored into floodplains, aquifer recharge can also double as habitat restoration for wildlife.
Farmers are likely to be motivated to dedicate some of their land to aquifer recharge, said Anisfeld, especially if they can reap the benefits later.
Still, he suggested, Californians will likely need to tackle its water challenges by decreasing demand as much as boosting supply. “I’m not convinced that recharge is going to be a substitute for reducing water use,” he said. “I don’t think it can, on its own, solve the whole problem.” Managed aquifer recharge may be a more attractive option for farmers than the alternative of changing their agricultural practices. “If you can recharge groundwater, that gives you more to work with,” Anisfeld said. “It means you can keep on farming and keep on growing water-intensive crops.”
Knight agreed that growers don’t “want to stop pumping” groundwater or have to fallow their fields. She hopes that by publishing a version of their data online and making it accessible to the public, her team will help empower individual stakeholders to explore the options that are best for their soil.
“I care about actionable data presented in a way that is helpful to end users, such as growers, managers of water districts,” she said. That way, “the user can make their own decisions about how best to use the results.”
As for Gemperle, she sees flooding her farmland as a way to ensure that her community continues to have access to water. “I see it as something that really points to how connected we are in this agricultural landscape,” she said. “We are more connected than disconnected.”
If you were to drink improperly recycled toilet water, it could really hurt you — but probably not in the way you’re thinking. Advanced purification technology so thoroughly cleans wastewater of feces and other contaminants that it also strips out natural minerals, which the treatment facility then has to add back in. If it didn’t, that purified water would imperil you by sucking those minerals out of your body as it moves through your internal plumbing.
So if it’s perfectly safe to consume recycled toilet water, why aren’t Americans living in parched Western states drinking more of it? A new report from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Natural Resources Defense Council finds that seven western states that rely on the Colorado River are on average recycling just a quarter of their water, even as they fight each other and Indigenous tribes for access to the river amid worsening droughts. Populations are also booming in the Southwest, meaning there’s less water for more people.
The report finds that states are recycling wildly different proportions of their water. On the high end, Nevada reuses 85 percent, followed by Arizona at 52 percent. But other states lag far behind, including California (22 percent) and New Mexico (18 percent), with Colorado and Wyoming at less than 4 percent and Utah recycling next to nothing.
“Overall, we are not doing nearly enough to develop wastewater recycling in the seven states that are part of the Colorado River Basin,” said Noah Garrison, a water researcher at UCLA and co-author of the report. “We’re going to have a 2 million to 4 million acre foot per year shortage in the amount of water that we’ve promised to be delivered from the Colorado River.” (An acre foot is what it would take to cover an acre of land in a foot of water, equal to 326,000 gallons.)
The report found that if the states other than high-achieving Nevada and Arizona increased their wastewater reuse to 50 percent, they’d boost water availability by 1.3 million acre feet every year. Experts think that it’s not a question of whether states need to reuse more toilet water, but how quickly they can build the infrastructure as droughts worsen and populations swell.
At the same time, states need to redouble efforts to reduce their demand for water, experts say. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, for example, provides cash rebates for homeowners to replace their water-demanding lawns with natural landscaping, stocking them with native plants that flourish without sprinklers. Between conserving water and recycling more of it, western states have to renegotiate their relationship with the increasingly precious resource.
“It’s unbelievable to me that people don’t recognize that the answer is: You’re not going to get more water,” said John Helly, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who wasn’t involved in the report. “We’ve lulled ourselves into this sense of complacency about the criticality of water, and it’s just starting to dawn on people that this is a serious problem.”
Yet the report notes that states vary significantly in their development and regulation of water recycling. For one, they treat wastewater to varying levels of purity. To get it ultra-pure for drinking, human waste and other solids are removed before the water is treated with ozone to kill bacteria and viruses. Next the water is forced through fine membranes to catch other particles. A facility then hits the liquid with UV light, killing off any microbes that might remain, and adds back those missing minerals.
That process is expensive, however, as building a wastewater treatment facility itself is costly, and it takes a lot of electricity to pump the water hard enough to get it through the filters. Alternatively, some water agencies will treat wastewater and pump the liquid underground into aquifers, where the earth filters it further. To use the water for golf courses and non-edible crops, they treat wastewater less extensively.
Absent guidance from the federal government, every state goes about this differently, with their own regulations for how clean water needs to be for potable or nonpotable use. Nevada, which receives an average of just 10 inches of rainfall a year, has an environmental division that issues permits for water reuse and oversees quality standards, along with a state fund that bankrolls projects. “It is a costly enterprise, and we really do need to see states and the federal government developing new funding streams or revenue streams in order to develop wastewater treatment,” Garrison said. “This is a readily available, permanent supply of water.”
Wastewater recycling can happen at a much smaller scale, too. A company called Epic Cleantec, based in San Francisco, makes a miniature treatment facility that fits inside high-rises. It pumps recycled water back into the units for non-potable use, like filling toilets. While it takes many years to build a large treatment facility, these smaller systems come online in a matter of months, and can reuse up to 95 percent of a building’s water.
Epic Cleantec says its systems and municipal plants can work in tandem as a sort of distributed network of wastewater recycling. “In the same way that we do with energy, where it’s not just on-site, rooftop solar and large energy plants, it’s both of them together creating a more resilient system,” said Aaron Tartakovsky, Epic Cleantec’s CEO and cofounder. “To use a water pun, I think there’s a lot of untapped potential here.”
An executive order issued in the early days of the Trump administration hit pause on at least $4 billion set aside to protect the flow of the Colorado River. The funds from the Inflation Reduction Act were offered to protect the flow of the water supply for about 40 million people and a massive agricultural economy. With the money on hold, Colorado River users are worried about the future of the dwindling water supply.
The river is shrinking due to climate change. The nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, created by dams on the Colorado River, have reached record low levels in recent years amid a megadrought spanning more than two decades. If water levels fall much lower, they could lose the ability to generate hydropower within the massive dams that hold them back, or even lose the ability to pass water downstream.
The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, allowed Biden to designate $4 billion for Colorado River programs, funding farmers, cities, and Native American tribes to conserve Colorado River water by leaving it in those reservoirs. The payments are compensation for lost income.
A lot of the IRA money has already been delivered, but Bart Fisher, who sits on the board of the Palo Verde Irrigation District in California, is worried about what will happen if it goes away.
“If there’s no funding,” he said, “there will be no conservation.”
The Colorado River flows out of Lake Mead on December 16, 2021.
Alex Hager / KUNC
Farmers in Palo Verde use Colorado River water to grow cattle feed and vegetables in the desert along the Arizona border. Fisher said they want to be active participants in protecting the river, but they stand to lose money if they use less water and grow fewer crops.
“You won’t see any ag producer in any district willing to sacrifice revenue from their normal ag production for nothing,” he said.
In the current funding cycle, landowners in Fisher’s irrigation district alone are getting about $40 million in exchange for cutting back on their water use. No one knows how much, if any, will be delivered in the next cycle, which starts in August. Fisher said farmers are already thinking about their budgets for the next growing season.
“At the moment, it’s unnerving to think that maybe come August the 1st, all of our plans will need to suddenly change,” he said.
When President Donald Trump signed his first executive order, “Unleashing American Energy,” it didn’t seem to have a direct impact on how much water is in the Colorado River, at least in the short term.
The order, signed the first day Trump took office, aims to, “unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources,” by ending “burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations.”
But the order also says, “All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.”
“These are not ‘woke’ environmental programs,” said Anne Castle, who held federal water policy roles during the Biden and Obama administrations. “These are essential to continued ability to divert water.”
Water users whose grants have been paused said they are asking the federal government for more information and getting little in the way of answers. The federal agencies in charge of Western water did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment.
Conservation programs like the one sending money to California farmers have been key in boosting water supplies in major reservoirs. That is no small feat, as leaders of the states that use Colorado River water are caught in a legal standoff about how to share it going forward. They appear to be making little progress as they meet behind closed doors ahead of a 2026 deadline.
“Having this appropriated funding suddenly taken away undoes years and years of very careful collaboration among the states in the Colorado River Basin,” Castle said, “and threatens the sustainability of the entire system.”
Camille Calimlim Touton, who served as commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation under President Joe Biden, speaks at a conference in Boulder, Colorado, on June 8, 2023. Alex Hager / KUNC
In addition to those water conservation programs, the IRA set aside hundreds of millions of dollars for projects aimed at keeping Colorado River tributaries clean and healthy. Conservation groups, small nonprofits, Native American tribes, and local governments were assigned federal money for a bevy of projects that included wildfire prevention and habitat restoration.
Sonja Chavez, general manager of the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, was expecting that money to make its way to her group for river improvement projects in western Colorado.
“If there isn’t some resolution to the freeze or some additional guidance on what’s going to happen for folks,” she said. “We may have to put our entire programs on pause.”
Smaller watershed groups and their projects to restore and improve small sections of rivers are uniquely dependent on money from the federal government.
“Federal funding is critical because that’s the big money,” said Holly Loff, a grant writer in western Colorado and the former director of the Eagle River Watershed Council. “No one can really compete with those big dollars, or very few other entities besides the federal government can fund at those levels.”
Small groups dependent on that federal funding have been scrambling to come up with contingency plans since it has been paused, and some of their leaders say the gap would be difficult to fill with money from donors or local governments.
Loff said a continued pause on funding would cause a lot of financial pain for communities near the Colorado River — such as those with economies dependent on water-based recreation — and people far away, like those who buy produce grown with Colorado River water.
“Our economy is going to be impacted,” she said. “It’s just far-reaching. And I really can’t think of how anyone can avoid being impacted.”
This story is part of ongoing coverage of water in the West, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
This week on Reveal, we celebrate our 10-year anniversary with a look back at some of our favorite stories, from investigations into water shortages in drought-prone California to labor abuses in the Dominican Republic. And we interview the journalists behind the reporting to explain what happened after the stories aired.
The city of Alto Hospicio, in Chile’s Atacama Desert, is one of the driest places on Earth. And yet its population of 140,000 continues to balloon, putting mounting pressure on nearby aquifers that haven’t been recharged by rain in 10,000 years. But Alto Hospicio, like so many other coastal cities, is rich in an untapped water resource: fog.
New research finds that by deploying fog collectors — fine mesh stretched between two poles — in the mountains around Alto Hospicio, the city could harvest an average of 2.5 liters of water per square meter of netting each day. Large fog collectors cost between $1,000 and $4,500 and measure 40 square meters, so just one placed near Alto Hospicio could grab 36,500 liters of water a year without using any electricity, according to a paper published on Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science.
By placing the collectors above town — where the altitude is ideal for exploiting the region’s predictable band of fog — water would flow downhill in pipelines by the power of gravity. So that initial investment for collectors would keep paying liquid dividends year after year. “If you’re pumping water from the underground, you will need a lot of energy,” said Virginia Carter Gamberini, a geographer and assistant professor at Chile’s Universidad Mayor and co-lead author of the paper. “From that perspective, it’s a very cheap technology.”
A view of Alto Hospicio, Chile.
Virginia Carter Gamberini
It’s a simple idea that’s already in use around the world. Fog is just a cloud that touches the ground. Like a puffy cloud higher in the atmosphere, it teems with tiny water droplets that gather in the mesh of a fog collector, dripping into a trough that runs into a tank. Communities across South America, Africa, and Asia have been deploying these collectors, though on very small scales compared to other methods like pumping groundwater.
So why haven’t cities expanded their use? For one, if a region gets rain, that volume of water is much higher than what can be extracted from fog, and communities can store that rainfall in reservoirs. Fog collection also requires constant attention, as the devices can break in fierce winds, requiring repairs.
The economics are tricky, too. Water remains very cheap in places with modern infrastructure, disincentivizing fog collection, said Daniel Fernandez, an environmental scientist at California State University, Monterey Bay who studies the technology but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “They’re going to catch a few gallons, if you’re lucky, in a day,” said Fernandez, who also founded a company that installs collectors. “That’s kind of cool to get that much from fog. But how much is that going to cost you to turn on your tap and get that much?”
A fog collector at work near the port city of Antofagasta, Chile.
Daniel Fernandez
The investment is more enticing where water is scarcer and therefore more expensive, Fernandez said. As climate change makes droughts more intense, communities struggling to get enough water might find the economics make sense. Supplementing aquifers, reservoirs, and other established sources with fog would help a region diversify its water system, in case one of them dries up or gets contaminated. Alto Hospicio can’t just rely on its aquifers, since they’re no longer being replenished by rain. “Without thinking outside the box, including fog harvesting, that solution places a limit on how long human habitation can exist there,” said Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, who wasn’t involved in the new paper.
Dense cities, though, may struggle to deploy fog collectors compared to the countryside. “The wind load on a fog collector is like that on the sail of a sailing ship,” said Robert S. Schemenauer, executive director of FogQuest, a Canadian nonprofit that advises on collection projects. “It has to be very strongly anchored. Therefore, placing it on the building could lead to building damage or material ending up on the street below.”
Beyond drinking water, using the fog for hydroponic farming could help Alto Hospicio and other parched communities grow their own food. Gamberini is already doing additional research elsewhere in the Atacama to expand this kind of farming, growing tomatoes, lettuce, and other crops with fog water and bountiful desert sunlight.
Even in the United States, where water is comparatively cheap, gardeners are experimenting with fog collectors. Peter Weiss, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been installing them in Pacifica, just south of San Francisco. In the summertime, fog can provide enough water to sustain a home’s established plants without turning on the hose.
For Weiss’ next project, he wants to bring fog collection to California’s vineyards. “That could be a way to make it more sustainable, less water intensive,” he said. “At first I hated fog because it’s so dreary. But then I started collecting it, and I loved it.”
Nearly 30 million people are living in areas of the US with limited water supplies as the country faces growing concerns over both water availability and quality, according to a new assessment by government scientists. The US Geological Survey (USGS), which is part of the Department of the Interior, issued what it said was a first-of-its-kind report last week, with USGS Director David…
It’s supposed to be the rainy season in Southern California, but the last time Los Angeles measured more than a tenth-inch of rain was eight months ago, after the city logged one of the soggiest periods in its recorded history. Since then, bone-dry conditions have set the stage for the catastrophic wildfires now descending upon the metropolis from multiple directions.
Harel Dor and Finn O’Brien were just finishing up dinner at a restaurant in Pasadena, California on Tuesday evening, when a friend texted them about an evacuation warning. A severe windstorm had spread what became the Eaton fire to the hills behind their home.
“Driving back up the house it was already feeling apocalyptic, with downed trees and visibility getting worse,” Dor said. As the couple returned to the house to evacuate their two cats, they could see the flames in the distance. Dor, who works nearby at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says while some coworkers have lost their homes, they don’t know if their apartment has survived the blaze.
“The emotions haven’t arrived yet,” Dor said. “A lot of it is just numbness and shock at the events unfolding.”
The hills around Los Angeles have become an inferno. Days after forecasters warned of dangerous fire weather conditions, twin blazes — driven by 100 mile per hour winds — began raging across some of Southern California’s most expensive neighborhoods, sending thousands of residents fleeing and threatening historic sites. Within five hours on Wednesday morning, both the Palisades Fire east of Santa Monica and the Eaton Fire across Pasadena exploded from 2,000 acres to over 10,000. So far, two people have been confirmed dead and more than 1,000 structures have burned, potentially making the Palisades Fire one of the country’s most destructive.
“I do expect it is plausible that the Palisades Fire in particular will become the costliest on record, period,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, during a livestream on Wednesday morning. That’s partly due to “the fact that some of those structures are some of the most expensive homes and buildings in the world.”
The fires have both immediate and underlying causes. The first ingredient for making such monstrous wildfires is the fuel. In the previous two years, some parts of coastal Southern California experienced their two wettest winters on record, spurring the growth of grass and brush. But now the region has had its driest start of winter on record, which parched that vegetation. The chaparral landscape turned into abundant tinder just waiting to burn.
“Under conditions of climate change, we will have wetter wet periods, very wet wet periods, and very dry dry periods,” said Stephanie Pincetl, director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA. “The climatic conditions that Southern California has experienced over centuries are simply going to be exacerbated.”
The second ingredient is the spark. It will take some time for investigators to determine what set off all these blazes, but where humans tread, wildfires start. It could be a wayward firework, or a chain dragging off the back of a truck on the highway, or arson. California also has a major problem with its electric equipment jostling in the wind, showering sparks into the vegetation below. As winds kicked up on Tuesday, utilities like Southern California Edison shut off power to areas of the city in an effort to prevent just such an event.
A resident fleeing the Palisades fire in Los Angeles on January 8, 2025.
Jon Putman/Anadolu via Getty Images
The third ingredient was high winds. This is Southern California’s prime season for Santa Ana winds, which form in the interior of the western United States. As that warm, dry air moves toward the sea, it drops down mountains, picking up speed. Scientists don’t expect climate change to boost the speed of these Santa Ana winds, though they may get drier and hotter. “They can dry vegetation even more,” said Alexander Gershunov, a research meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “The same slopes that get a lot of precipitation from atmospheric rivers also get the strong Santa Ana winds.”
So there’s more fuel in those places, and unfortunately more of the wind that drives catastrophic fires. Once there’s a spark, the winds shove the fire forward with oftentimes inescapable speed. That’s how the Camp Fire killed 85 people in 2018, as the flames raced through the town of Paradise, trapping people in homes and cars. And that’s why authorities are fearing for the worst for these new, fast-moving Los Angeles fires.
“The spread has been quite dramatic. The Eaton fire especially,” said Devin Black, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service. Because the winds are moving erratically, he said, the public should be cautious when driving around the flames. “They can move very quickly, and you might get trapped,” he said.
Wind-driven wildfires are also notoriously difficult to fight, and not just because they move so fast. Those Santa Ana winds are blowing embers ahead of the main wall of the fire, lighting new fires perhaps a mile ahead. So a large, intense fire can spawn smaller blazes that themselves burn out of control, as crews are already stretched thin across the landscape. In Los Angeles county on Wednesday afternoon, four separate fires were taxing the firefighting response, with some fire hydrants running dry. None of them were contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Part of the problem is that winds grounded the aircraft used to drop water.
The immediate emergency is containing the blazes and getting people to safety. The longer-term challenge is better adapting Los Angeles, and the rest of California, to a future of ever-worsening droughts and wildfires. “People talk about adapting to the climate,” Pincetl said. “We haven’t adapted to the climate we have, let alone the climate that’s coming.”
The Amazon, sometimes called the “lungs of the planet,” this year showed signs of further inching toward a much-feared tipping point, threatening the very existence of the world’s largest rainforest. Rampant wildfires and extreme drought ravaged large parts of the Amazon in 2024. The fires and dry conditions were fueled by deforestation and the El Niño weather pattern, and also made worse by…
As Earth grows warmer, its ground is becoming drier and saltier, with profound consequences for the planet’s 8 billion inhabitants — nearly a third of whom already live in places where water is increasingly scarce and the ability to raise crops and livestock is increasingly difficult. Climate change is accelerating this trend. New research has found global warming has made 77 percent of the…
For farmers, planning for spring begins in the fall. That’s when seeds go into the ground. Later, if all goes well, roots begin to grow, followed by shoots and leaves. But that only happens when there’s enough water.
“Unfortunately, there’s a lot of seeds that get sown in the fall, and without rain, they’re not going to germinate,” said Amy Hepworth, owner of Hepworth Farms, a seventh-generation family farm located just off the Hudson River in New York state. In the Hudson Valley, a corridor known for its agricultural productivity that stretches from just north of New York City to the state’s capital in Albany, multiple counties are currently under a drought watch. The region has experienced an exceptionally dry autumn, with local meteorologists estimating that last month wasthe driest October on record. “Had it rained even once or twice [in] September, October, you would see green fields out there now,” said Hepworth. “But now they’re still bare.” Like many growers in her area, Hepworth has dealt with this setback by relying on her farm’s irrigation system while waiting for rain to fall.
Growers in the Hudson Valley are part of a robust local food movement, selling their produce directly to consumers via farm stands, farmers markets, and community-supported agriculture programs (or CSAs), or to restaurants as far as New York City. But the impacts of climate changeare making their jobs harder. The historic lack of rainfall in New York is just another sign of the increasingly erratic weather conditions under which food must grow.
“I’ve been farming for almost 50 years, and there’s no normal,” said Guy Jones, who runs Blooming Hill Farms with his three sons in Orange County. These days, he said, “it either rains like a motherf***er, or it’s dry as hell. Pardon my French.” He added: “The trend isn’t necessarily solely dry or wet. It’s just extreme.”
New York is far from the only place experiencing a very dry, unseasonably warm autumn: Abnormally high October temperatures, fueled by climate change, were seen in cities across the country, according to analysis from Climate Central. Those bumps in temperature have been coupled with very little rainfall: In the first few days of November, drought conditions impacted 49 of the 50 states, according to the National Weather Service.
These trends are in keeping with the way scientists expect climate change to worsen drought riskin the U.S. and around the world. Warmer temperatures lead to more evaporation — meaning less moisture in the soil and less water in surface water sources like lakes, rivers, and streams. Warmer seasons can also affect snowpack, which the western U.S. depends on to replenish water sources throughout the spring and summer, as snow in the mountains melts.
Shannon Roback, a science director at Riverkeeper, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the Hudson River and its tributaries, said this year’s drought conditions in the Hudson Valley were “not particularly surprising to me.” As New York’s climate changes, overall precipitation is expected to increase, she noted. “But it is also possible that we will see more short-term seasonal drought that lasts from weeks to months.”
This year, the especially dry conditions also mean that the Hudson Valley faces a heightened risk of wildfires — something typically unheard of in the area. Parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have all seen wildfires in early November, with a massive fire on the New Jersey-New York state border still raging as of Monday.
A firefighter takes a break from battling a series of brush fires outside of Pompton Lakes, New Jersey.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
Amanda Dykeman, one of the owners of Dykeman Farm, a fourth-generation vegetable farm in Dutchess County, described seeing her first-ever brush fire in the area, “literally on the other side” of the mountain next to her farm. The brush fire started in late October and continued for more than a week, according to Dykeman, while multiple fire departments worked to put it out.
Dykeman said she and her family watched “big helicopters dump water on it.” Although it was interesting “to see something that we’ve never seen before, we certainly hope we never see that again in our lifetime here,” she added.
The drought is also affecting her ability to grow healthy crops. Dykeman, who said she is “praying for rain,” reasons that some of the impacts of a dry, warm fall will be felt throughout the winter and until the spring. That’s because after the summer, a cool period typically helps kill off harmful pests that can hamper next year’s crops. “In the long term, with the warm weather, you are not having any type of mold spores or even any sort of pests die,” she said. Until the weather cools off, Dykeman’s squash, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants are vulnerable to bugs and blight.
The biggest problem she and other farms are facing is just how dry the soil is, making it hard to plant seeds. “I mean, the dirt is just powder — quite, quite deep in the ground,” said Dykeman. Recently, while setting up for a fall festival on the farm, she and the other folks on the farm had a hard time driving tent stakes into the ground because of how dry and fine the soil is. “The ground is just dust.”
Hepworth, who grows apples, vegetables, cannabis, and other crops on her farm, reported similar soil conditions — even though she is located outside of the counties under drought watch. And she warned that dry soil can be particularly difficult to manage. “I would say that the biggest negative impact is when it’s this dry, you can’t work your fields.” Typically, she said, the soil in the ground has some moisture in it in October, due to seasonal precipitation. But when the soil on a farm is super dried out, working the fields will turn it into a powder, said Hepworth. Watering the soil under these conditions can leave you with “a crusty, hard soil,” she said. “And that’s the last thing you want. You want your soil to have a lot of air and balance.” The trick is to continuously monitor the soil’s moisture content and wait until conditions are right to properly irrigate.
A cannabis plant at Hepworth Farms in 2022. AP Photo / Mary Altaffer
Hepworth noted that the lack of rain has meant plenty of sunshine, which has actually helped the quality of some of her crops, like apples, this year. “We’re farmers, and we’re used to every imaginable weather,” she said. “Part of our job is being inside of the natural world. So farmers adapt to their situation.”
Jones agreed but also said he’s noticed the natural world changing. Whenever it does rain, it isn’t a moderate rain like the region has been historically used to. “It’s not like ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ you know, with your little umbrella, you’re walking out on a rainy day,” said Jones. Instead, “the wind’s blowing like crazy. You get three inches in an hour,” he said.
The drought watch his county is under does not carry any restrictions around water use, although residents are “strongly encouraged to voluntarily conserve water.” Jones noted that his farm is set up in such a way that he can irrigate 100 percent of his fields, if he has to. Many farms, including Jones’, rely on groundwater from wells driven on their farmland. Roback, the science director at Riverkeeper, notes that everyone who relies on groundwater — farmers and other private citizens who may have their own wells — “has to be more conscious of their water use during times of drought because” without sufficient rainfall, “there’s nothing to recharge those aquifers.”
Rio Grande Valley farmers who have seen their industry devastated by insufficient rain and depleting water reserves have been offered up a modest but helpful amount of water for their dried-up land.
The farmers are hesitating to accept it.
Farmers and the irrigation districts that supply water to farmers remain in a stalemate with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality over 120,000 acre-feet of water that Mexico offered up to the U.S.
This is the catch: If the farmers accept the water now, they will have to give up the water they already own and need for next year.
In mid-October, farmers and irrigation districts met with representatives from TCEQ and the International Boundary and Water Commission, the federal agency that oversees water treaties between the U.S. and Mexico, to discuss the offer.
It entails more than 120,000 acre-feet of water that Mexico offered up to the U.S. after heavy rains caused significant runoff from Mexico’s Marte Gomez reservoir, which is at 123.7 percent capacity.
If IBWC accepted the water and allocated it to Texas, TCEQ would be responsible for distributing the water within the state through their watermaster program based on who owned the rights to water.
Many water rights holders don’t have sufficient water for the planting season in the spring, said Sonny Hinojosa, a water advocate with the Hidalgo County Irrigation District Number 2. If TCEQ were to charge them for accepting the water being offered by Mexico now, the water they already own and which they intended to preserve for the next planting cycle would be released for other uses.
“A farmer’s not going to invest in seed and prepping the land if he doesn’t see enough water stored behind the dam to finish out his crop,” Hinojosa said. “It’s too big of an investment.”
TCEQ told farmers and employees of irrigation districts who were present that not charging them for that water would be unfair to other water rights holders who don’t receive the San Juan river water, according to Hinojosa, who hopes to convince the department that everyone would benefit.
If they’re not charged and their current water is maintained in the reservoirs, that water could be reallocated to others if enough water comes in later from rain or other sources.
“The water that we don’t ask to be released for us stays behind the dam, and when there’s the next allocation, everyone gets a piece of the pie,” he said.
The Falcon and Amistad reservoirs supply water to farmers and irrigation districts in the Rio Grande Valley, but levels there remain low from a lack of sufficient rainfall to meet farmers’ needs.
The U.S. side of the reservoirs is also supposed to receive water from Mexico under the terms of a 1944 treaty. Mexico must deliver 1,750,000 million acre-feet of water to the U.S. from six tributaries every five years, or an average of 350,000 every year. But Mexico has fallen behind, with a balance of more than 1.3 million acre-feet it needs to deliver by the October 2025 deadline.
The San Juan River is not one of those six tributaries, but if that water is accepted, it would be credited towards Mexico’s water debt.
Reaching an agreement on the offered water soon is important as that water is in danger of spilling over the dam.
“There is a danger if they get rain in this region and the water starts to spill,” said Maria-Elena Giner, IBWC commissioner. “The other thing is that if we don’t start using some of that water, or that commitment isn’t made very soon, others in Mexico may say, ‘Well, then we’ll keep it, and we’ll use it for our users.’”
It’s that urgency that motivated Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller to issue an executive order last month authorizing farmers and irrigation districts to use water from the Rio Grande.
“Every day is critical,” Miller said, adding that TCEQ’s hands were tied on the matter. “By the time they got through the bureaucratic red tape, I was afraid the water’s already out the Gulf.”
But Miller’s authority to give farmers that access is questionable at best. TCEQ said water rights were governed by the Texas Water Code and TCEQ regulations.
“All Texans along the Rio Grande should continue to comply with these requirements,” a spokesperson for TCEQ wrote in an email.
The department added it continued to work with local stakeholders and the IBWC on negotiating water deliveries from Mexico.
The IBWC said they appreciated Miller’s efforts to help South Texas producers and irrigation districts. Giner said the agency continues to urge Mexico to provide a plan to address the shortfall and make good on their water deliveries.
Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.
The morning temperature is nearing 100 degrees Fahrenheit as Keith Seaman sweats beneath his bucket hat, walking door to door through the cookie-cutter blocks of a subdivision in Casa Grande, Arizona. Seaman, a Democrat who represents this Republican-leaning area in the state’s House of Representatives, is trying to retain a seat he won by a margin of around 600 votes just two years ago. He wants to know what issues matter most to his constituents, but most of them don’t answer the door, or they say they’re too busy to talk. Those that do answer tend to mention standard campaign issues like rising prices and education — which Seaman, a former public school teacher, is only too happy to discuss.
“We’ll do our best to get more public money into education,” he tells one man in the neighborhood, before turning to the constituent’s kindergarten-age daughter to pat her on the head. “What grade are you in?”
“Why are you at our house?” the girl asks in return.
Seaman has knocked on thousands of doors as he seeks reelection this year. While his voters are fired up about everything from inflation to abortion, one issue doesn’t come up much on Seaman’s scorching tour through suburbia — even though it’s plainly visible in the parched cotton and alfalfa fields that surround the subdivision where he’s stumping for votes.
Keith Seaman canvasses voters in Casa Grande, Arizona. The Democratic state representative is fighting to win re-election in a red district. Eliseu Cavalcante / Grist
That issue is water. In Pinal County, which Seaman represents, water shortages mean that farmers no longer have access to the Colorado River, formerly the lifeblood of their cotton and alfalfa empires. The booming population of the area’s subdivisions face a water reckoning as well: The state has placed a moratorium on new housing development in parts of the county, as part of an effort to protect dwindling groundwater resources.
Over the past four years, Arizona has become a poster child for water scarcity in the United States. Between decades of unsustainable groundwater pumping and a once-in-a-millenium drought, fueled by climate change, water sources in every region of the state are under threat. As groundwater aquifers dry up near some of the most populous areas, officials have blocked thousands of new homes from being built in and around the booming Phoenix metropolitan area. In more remote parts of the state, water-guzzling dairy farms have caused local residents’ wells to run dry. The drought on the Colorado River, long a lifeline for both agriculture and suburbia across the U.S. West, has forced further water cuts to both farms and neighborhoods in the heart of the state.
Arizona voters know that they’re deciding the country’s future — the state is one of just a half-dozen likely to determine the next president — but it’s unclear if they know that they’re voting on an existential threat in their own backyards. The outcome of state legislative races in swing districts like Seaman’s will determine who controls the divided state legislature, where Democrats are promoting new water restrictions and Republicans are fighting to protect thirsty industries like real estate and agriculture, regardless of what that means for future water availability.
“Everybody’s running for re-election,” said Kathleen Ferris, who crafted some of the state’s landmark water legislation and now teaches water policy at Arizona State University. “Nobody wants to sit around the table and try to deal with these issues.”
For these lawmakers’ voters, topics like abortion, the economy, and public safety are drawing far more attention than the water in their taps, and it will be these issues that drive the most people to the polls. But for the state officials who win on election day, their most consequential legacy may well be what they decide to do about the future of water in Arizona.
“They keep saying, ‘well, water is nonpartisan,’” Ferris added. “That’s not true anymore. It’s really not true.”
A billboard in Tucson supporting Kirsten Engel advertises her support for stronger water restrictions. Engel’s race is one of a few toss-up races that will determine control of Congress.
Eliseu Cavalcante / Grist
It’s not hard to see why hot-button issues like immigration and the cost of living are on the minds of Arizona voters: The state sits on the U.S.-Mexico border and has experienced some of the highest rates of inflation in the country over the past few years. Meanwhile, its Republican-controlled state legislature has cut public education funding and allowed a nineteenth-century abortion ban to remain in effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The state is at the center of almost every major political debate — “the center of the political universe,” in Politico’s words — and its nearly evenly divided electorate makes its swing votes key to determining who controls both the White House and Congress.
Even when the temperature doesn’t top 115 degrees F, the resulting campaign frenzy can make an out-of-state visitor light-headed. Lawn signs clutter gas station parking lots, highway medians, and front yards; virtually every other television commercial is an ad for or against a candidate for Congress, the presidency, or some state office. A commercial slamming a Democratic candidate as a defund-the-police radical will frequently air right after an ad condemning a Republican as a threat to democracy itself. Mailers and campaign literature clog mailboxes and dangle on doorknobs.
This avalanche of campaign advertising seldom mentions water. During a week reporting in the state, I saw exactly one ad that focused on the issue. It was a billboard in Tucson announcing that Kirsten Engel, the Democratic candidate for a pivotal congressional seat, supports “Protecting Arizona from Drought” — not exactly a substantive engagement with the issue.
The reason for this avoidance is simple, according to Nick Ponder, a vice president of government affairs at HighGround, a leading Arizona political strategy firm. He said that while many voters in the state rank water among their top three or four issues, most don’t have a detailed understanding of water policy — meaning it’s unlikely that they’ll vote based on how candidates say they’ll handle water issues.
“They understand that we’re in a desert, and that we have water challenges — in particular groundwater and the Colorado River — but I don’t think that they understand how to best manage that,” he told Grist.
A fallowed farm field stands next to a field of cotton in Casa Grande, Arizona. Drought on the Colorado River has robbed farmers in the area of access to irrigation water for their crops.
Eliseu Cavalcante / Grist
And how could they? Understanding Arizona water policy involves a maze of acronyms — AMA, GMA, INA, ADWR, CAWS, DAWS, DCP, CAP, and CAGRD are just the entry-level nouns — and complex technical models that track water levels thousands of feet underground. Even many elected officials on both sides of the aisle aren’t well versed in the issue, so they defer to the party leaders who have the strongest grasp on how the state’s water system works.
One upshot of this confusion — as well as the state’s bitter partisan divide — is that, even as Arizona’s water crisis has gained national attention, state lawmakers have failed to pass significant legislation to address the deficit of this critical resource. Over the past two years, the state’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, has been unable to broker a deal with the Republicans who control both chambers of the state legislature. Hobbs has put forward a series of proposals that would reform both agricultural water use in rural areas and rapid development in the suburbs of Phoenix, but she has come up a handful of votes short of passing them. Republicans have put forward their own plans — which are friendlier to the avowed water needs of farmers and housing developers — that she has vetoed.
Once you cut through the thicket of reports and acronyms, it’s clear that this year’s election is pivotal for breaking this gridlock and determining the future of water policy in the state. Republicans hold one-vote majorities in both chambers of the legislature, so state Democrats only need to flip one seat in each chamber in order to gain unified control of the government. If that happens, Hobbs will be able to ignore the objections of the agriculture and homebuilding industries, which have kept Republicans from signing on to her plans.
Hobbs and the Democrats want to limit or prohibit new farmland in rural areas, while simultaneously making it harder for homebuilders around Phoenix and Casa Grande to resume building new subdivisions. This would slow down, but not reverse, the decline in water levels around the state — and it would likely diminish profits for two industries that are pillars of the state’s economy. If Republicans retain control of the legislature, they would reopen new suburban development and roll out more flexible rules for rural groundwater, giving a freer hand to both industries but incurring the risk of more groundwater shortages in decades to come.
Legislators came close to reaching agreement on both issues earlier this year. Republicans passed a bill that would relax development restrictions on fallow farmland where housing tracts could be developed — a compromise with theoretical appeal to both parties’ desire to keep building housing for the state’s booming population — but Hobbs vetoed it, saying it lacked enough safeguards to prevent future water shortages. At the same time, lawmakers from both parties made progress on a deal that would allow the state to set limits on groundwater drainage in rural areas, but the talks stalled as this year’s legislative session came to a close.
“We had so many meetings, and we’ve never gotten closer,” said Priya Sundareshan, a Democratic state senator who is the party’s foremost expert on water issues in the legislature. “Now we’re in campaign mode.”
In Seaman’s district of Pinal County, where water restrictions have created difficulties for both the agriculture and real estate industries, many of those who are engaged on water issues see a stark partisan divide. Paul Keeling, a fifth-generation farmer in Casa Grande, framed the shortage of water on the Colorado River as a competition between red Arizona and blue California.
“We’re supposed to be able to get a part of that water, and now we can’t,” he told Grist. “It’s all going to California, to the f***ing liberals and the Democrats.”
Eliseu Cavalcante / Grist
Keeling has had to shrink his family’s cotton-farming enterprise over the past few years, because he’s lost the right to draw water from the canal that delivers Colorado River water to Arizona. It’s one reason among many that Keeling said he’s supporting former President Donald Trump this year, as he has in the past two elections.
The Republican leadership of Pinal County has sparred with Governor Hobbs and state Democrats on housing issues as well, albeit in far less animated terms. In response to studies showing the county’s aquifer diminishing, the state government placed a moratorium on new groundwater-fed development in the area in 2019. Homebuilders and developers pinned their hopes on Republicans’ proposed reform allowing new development on former farmland, but Hobbs’s veto dashed those dreams.
Stephen Miller, a conservative Republican who serves on the county’s board of supervisors, told Grist that he views the Democrats’ opposition to new Pinal County development as motivated by partisan politics. The Republicans legislators who represent the area voted in favor of the bill that would restart development, but Seaman, the area’s lone Democratic representative, voted against it.
“We’re just sitting back watching because the makeup of the House and the Senate will determine what happens here,” Miller said. “If they’re both taken over by the Democrats, I think there’s probably very little we can do [to relax the development restrictions].”
As Miller sees it, the restriction on new housing is part of a ploy by the state’s Democratic establishment to suppress growth in a conservative area — or even repossess its water.
“It shouldn’t be a partisan thing at all,” he said. “You’d think that they’d all want to pull this wagon in the same direction. But all they want Pinal County for is to stick a straw in here and take our water.”
Another reason for the relative campaign silence on water issues is that the regions where water is most threatened — areas where massive agricultural groundwater usage has emptied household wells and caused land to crack apart — tend to be represented by the politicians who are most dismissive of water conservation efforts, and vice versa. Cochise County, where an enormous dairy operation called Riverview has residents up in arms over vanishing well water, backed Trump by almost 20 points in 2020; La Paz County, where a massive Saudi farming operation has drained local aquifers, backed the former president by almost 40 points. The state representatives from these areas are almost all Republicans opposed to new water regulation; many have direct ties to the agriculture or real estate industries.
Meanwhile, the majority of pro-regulation Democrats in the state legislature represent urban areas that have more diverse sources of water, stronger regulations, and more backup water to help them get through periods of shortage.
The state legislature’s two leading voices on water exemplify this divide. Democratic state senator Priya Sundareshan represents a progressive district in the core of Tucson, where city leaders have banked trillions of gallons of Colorado River water, all but ensuring that the city won’t go dry — and can even continue to grow as the river shrinks.
Priya Sundareshan represents Tucson as a Democrat in Arizona’s State Senate. She has led the campaign for stronger water restrictions in rural and urban areas. Eliseu Cavalcante / Grist
Sundareshan’s chief adversary is Republican Gail Griffin, a veteran legislator from Cochise County who chairs the lower chamber’s powerful natural resources committee. Griffin, a realtor, has blocked nearly all proposed water legislation for years, preventing even bills from members of her own party from getting a vote. Other legislators and water experts often cite her as the principal reason the state has not moved any major bills to regulate rural water usage — even though the county she represents faces arguably the most acute water crisis of them all. (Griffin did not respond to Grist’s requests for comment.)
Sundareshan, for her part, admits that it’s awkward that urban legislators are trying to set water policy for the rural parts of the state. But she says that Republicans have stalled on the issue for too long.
“It doesn’t look great,” she said. “But right now, rural legislators are setting policy for urban areas. That’s why that’s why legislators like me are stepping up to say, ‘well, we need to actually solve these issues.’ Water is water, right? And the lack of availability of water in a rural area is going to impact the availability of water in our urban areas.”
The backlash to unsustainable groundwater pumping is not just coming from urban progressives, though — it’s also coming rural Republicans’ own constituents. In 2022, Cochise County voters approved a ballot proposal to restrict the growth of their water usage. (The strictness of the new rules is still being debated.) Even so, there’s no sign that any of these areas will endorse a Democrat. When Hobbs held a series of town halls in rural areas facing groundwater issues last year, she and her staff faced significant blowback from attendees who didn’t want the state meddling in their water usage. This year, elections in these areas are not even close to competitive. Griffin, the legislature’s strongest opponent of water regulation, is running unopposed.
This means that the future of the state’s water policy depends on voters in just a few swing districts that straddle the urban-rural divide: suburban seats on the outskirts of Phoenix and Tucson, where new subdivisions collide with vestigial farmland and open desert. For many voters in these purple districts, Arizona’s water problems are far from a motivating political issue — and likely won’t be for decades to come, as aquifers silently diminish underground. Voters might hear about water issues in other parts of the state, or wince when they see their water bills, but the disappearing water under their feet is all but invisible, and may remain so for the rest of their lives.
This dissonance is best exemplified by the 17th state legislative district, perhaps the most pivotal swing seat in the legislature. The district extends along the northern edge of Tucson, roping in a mix of retirement communities, rural houses, and cotton farms that may soon be replaced by new tract housing. Many of the new developments in these areas, such as the sprawling Saddlebrooke neighborhood, rely on finite aquifers and get water delivered by private companies. To comply with Arizona law, developers have to prove that they have enough water to supply new homes for 100 years, but even that doesn’t guarantee that the aquifers won’t continue drying up.
The Saddlebrooke neighborhood outside Tucson, Arizona, is part of the 17th legislative district. The district is one of a few competitive races that will determine whether Democrats take control of the state legislature.
Eliseu Cavalcante / Grist
It’s difficult to interest voters in a groundwater decline that is happening out of view, in a crisis that almost nobody is talking about publicly. The best that local Democrats can do is make a general pitch that water security isa common sense, bipartisan problem that they are committed to solving — without needing to explain how they would resolve complex questions about the interplay between water regulation and economic growth, among other nuances.
John McLean, a former engineer who is running against a longtime conservative legislator in an effort to flip the 17th district, has sought to position himself as a straight-down-the-middle moderate. His campaign literature doesn’t mention his party affiliation, but it does tout water as one of his three key policy issues, along with public education and abortion access. The campaign pamphlet he’s been leaving in the doorways of homes in Saddlebrooke argues for a “commonsense approaches to secure our water future” and declares that “we must stop foreign and out-of-state corporations from pumping unlimited water out of our state” — something that has happened in the conservative, rural parts of Arizona, but nowhere near Saddlebrooke and the 17th district.
John McLean stands in a dried-out wash in his neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona. McLean is running for the state senate on a platform that includes support for stronger water restrictions.
Eliseu Cavalcante / Grist
When I joined him as he knocked doors in Saddlebrooke, McLean told me that he’s found that almost every voter he meets agrees with him on the need for sensible water regulations — a far cry from lightning-rod issues like public safety, abortion, and inflation.
“Everybody is really serious about water independence, and I think that they’re concerned about partisanship,” he said. “I don’t think there’s really much of a partisan difference among citizens when it comes to water.”
That apparent consensus, however, does not extend to the state’s elected officials.
“My Republican opponent voted to relax groundwater pumping restrictions,” McLean,referring to a bill that would have eliminated legal liability for groundwater users whose water usage compromised nearby rivers or streams. “So he was on exactly the wrong side of that one.”
Fossil fuel CO2 emissions are taking the world’s time-honored ecosystems, like the world-famous Amazon River, down onto their knees. The problem is greenhouse gases like CO2 and CH4 trap heat and excessive levels, like we’ve been experiencing, create extreme heat; it’s a direct connection that’s destroying the world’s legendary ecosystems. Over time, the biosphere rejects human meddling by undercutting these wondrous natural systems that support human life. The conclusion is too dreadful to discuss.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is so alarmed that it’s calling for “Urgent Action.”
According to Celeste Saulo, secretary general of the WMO: “Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change. We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems, and economies. Melting ice and glaciers threaten long-term water security for many millions of people. And yet we are not taking the necessary urgent action.” ( “Climate Warning as World’s Rivers Dry Up at Fastest Rate for 30 Years,” Guardian, October 7, 2024)
If there’s any doubt about the reality of climate change as a threat, the mighty Amazon River is a real time testament flashing warning signals of deep trouble. Large regions of the 4,000-mile waterway are disappearing right before our eyes because of global warming’s most lethal weapon, drought!
Devastating drought is clobbering portions of the world’s most famous river, a vital commercial superhighway that delivers goods throughout the South American continent: “The Amazon is both the world’s largest river by volume and the longest river system, emerging in the Peruvian Andes and crossing five countries before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean. It is home to a rich variety of aquatic life, like piranhas and pink river dolphins. In some areas, the river is still very deep — up to 400 feet — and can accommodate ocean liners.” (“A Changing Climate is Scorching the World’s Biggest River,”New York Times, October 8, 2024)
Like elsewhere throughout the world, average temperatures in South America are rising beyond safe limits and abnormal severe droughts ensue. Regions of the Amazon have seen temperature rises of 2°C since the 1980s or the maximum before triggering several enormous problems, such as warned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Well, we now know that the IPCC was correct to warn of serious problems as oil producers spew out enormous quantities of CO2 blanketing the atmosphere. The Amazon River is living, and dying, proof of the CO2-global warming-drought connection.
According to Bernardo Flores, Federal University of Santa Catarina/Brazil, all signs point to more impossible-to-deal-with temperatures coming down the pike. Already, back-to-back years of severe drought have scorched the Amazon. According to Dr Ane Alencar, director of science at IPAM Amazônia, “The river’s had no chance to recover,” Ibid.
Climate scientists are dumbfounded by the onset of rivers of the world drying up at the fastest pace in modern history. Ominously, major rivers are hitting new lows at the same time as major reservoirs drop dangerously low. Last year more than 50% of global river catchment areas hit abnormally low levels with “most being in deficit.” It’s deadly serious global warming at work that was seen to a lesser extent in 2021 and 2022. The Amazon, Mississippi, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Danube, Loire, Mekong, and several others have been hit with abnormally low conditions over the past three years.
Deceivingly, there’s a rhythm to the onset of drought and floods not necessarily hitting consecutively year after year but every-other-year or every-third-year, like once-in-100-year floods compressed in time. Massive disasters are no longer once every 100-years. They recur every few years. For example, according to NASA, since 2000, severe drought hit Brazil every 5 years like clockwork but now it’s back-to-back. Nobody knows what to expect next. It’s literally “hold one’s breath” as to the survivability of the world’s biggest most famous river, easily spotted from outer space.
Like the Sword of Damocles, a scourge of drought threatens the world like never before. For example, two years ago in Europe: “In places, the Loire can now be crossed on foot; France’s longest river has never flowed so slowly. The Rhine is fast becoming impassable to barge traffic. In Italy, the Po is 2 metres lower than normal, crippling crops. Serbia is dredging the Danube. Across Europe, drought is reducing once-mighty rivers to trickles, with potentially dramatic consequences for industry, freight, energy and food production.” (“Europe’s Rivers Run Dry as Scientists Warn Drought Could be Worst in 500 Years,” Guardian, Aug. 13, 2022).
China in the same year: “The impact of the drying Yangtze has been enormous. In Sichuan, a province of 84 million people, hydropower makes up about 80% of electricity capacity. Much of that comes from the Yangtze River, and as its flow slows down, power generation has dwindled, leaving authorities there to order all its factories shut for six days. The province is seeing around half the rain it usually does and some reservoirs have dried up entirely, according to state news agency Xinhua.” (CNN)
The Hydrological Cycle
According to WMO, rising temperatures have dramatically altered the hydrological cycle of the world, it has accelerated and become unpredictably erratic. Society is facing growing issues of either too much or too little water. On the one hand, warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, with atmospheric rivers cascading bucket-loads of water, creating flash floods. Conversely more heat brings on evaporation and drying of soils leading to severe drought. It’s all heat related. The planet has more heat than the hydrological system can handle. Meanwhile, the world’s water towers, e.g., European Alps, are melting away, threatening commercial rivers and adequate potable water supplies.
Yet, in the face of abrupt damaging climate change, fossil fuel companies have publicly declared their intentions to crank up oil and gas production like never before, quadrupling production from newly approved projects by 2030 (Global Energy Monitor), the outlook for world natural resources like the Amazon River and the Amazon rainforest is beyond shaky. It’s dreadful. And everybody has good reason to be nervous about too much CO2 and other greenhouse gases altering the most significant sources of ongoing life on the planet. There are way too many things going wrong, like over-heated sea waters generating big and bigger hurricanes, to ignore the necessity of getting off fossil fuels as soon as possible.
The WMO is calling for Urgent Action by the nations of the world. Everybody knows what needs to be done.
This year, the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission held a hearing in Santa Fe to seek public input on regulating wastewater discharge from the oil and gas industry. It ended up dealing a blow to Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s ambitious proposal to reuse the water for alternative energy development.
Under the proposal, which was announced a few months earlier at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference and dubbed the “Strategic Water Supply,” the state would buy both natural brackish and oilfield-produced water, contract with private companies for treatment or cleaning, and then provide the cleaned water to so-called green industries like solar and wind energy and electric vehicle manufacturing. The $500 million investment, Lujan Grisham said at the U.N. conference, would help “strengthen our climate resiliency and protect our precious freshwater resources.”
But the majority of the public who attended the hearing or submitted written comments opposed any discharge of either treated or untreated produced water, with some calling the water toxic and contaminated. New Mexico Water Quality Control Commissioner Katie Zemlick summarized the concerns of many citizens: Given the lack of reliable data on the chemicals found in the industrially produced water, “Why would we want to move forward with applications that could potentially interact with ground or surface water?”
Some environmental and Indigenous activists also panned the proposal, with activists calling it a “false solution” that funnels money to the oil and gas industry. And during the 2024 legislative session, a bill to fund the project received little support from lawmakers, and died in committee.
Members of the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission listen to testimony during one day of the hearing in August.
Adam Ferguson/Santa Fe Reporter
All the while, the state hasn’t give up: The New Mexico Environment Department (under which the Water Quality Control Commission falls) collected information from the private and public sectors on treatment and industrial reuse of produced water, a preliminary step before requesting and accepting proposals under the plan. And at the hearing they pursued new rules for the use of produced water in pilot projects.
Mike Hightower, program director of the New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium, a partnership between academia, government agencies, national laboratories, the private sector, and the state, testified that “the data available on produced water overwhelmingly shows that it can be treated and used safely.”
Other oil-producing Western states are also grappling with how to manage increasing volumes of produced water, given intensifying drought and dwindling storage options.
New Mexico is at the center of the debate because of the lucrative Permian Basin, which extends from West Texas into southeastern New Mexico. The Permian is the nation’s most productive oilfield, accounting for over 40 percent of total U.S. oil production. It also generates the most wastewater — more than 15 million barrels per day in 2022, over 10 times more than the next-highest producing basin.
James Kenney, the New Mexico Environment Department secretary, emphasized in an interview that the state is not proposing reuse for drinking water or agriculture. But using produced water for hydrogen fuel development or solar projects, he said, “seems like a great way to offset freshwater use.”
Currently, he added, most produced water is injected back underground, and it’s “a real missed opportunity” not to reuse it.
But public health advocates are concerned. Ted Schettler, science director at the Science and Environmental Health Network, a nonprofit group, said that “produced water is highly toxic.” In addition to known carcinogens like formaldehyde, he said, produced water presents “reproductive hazards, developmental hazards, neurotoxic hazards” to humans.
The Permianwastewater surge is the result of a boom in fracking — an extractive technique in which fluid is pumped into wells at high pressure to break open tight rock formations and release oil and gas deposits. As of 2022, around 95 percent of the Permian’s oil and gas wells were horizontal wells, which extend horizontally below the surface, and typically fracked, up from around 20 percent in 2011. Along with hydrocarbons, large quantities of water are brought to the surface with a host of naturally occurring substances, like salts, metals, and oil and grease, as well as chemicals added by fuel companies.
The region’s enormous volume of wastewater and “high current and projected levels of water scarcity makes the Permian a key location” of regulation and research, according to a 2023 report from the Ground Water Protection Council, a nonprofit composed of state groundwater regulatory agencies.
For now, regulation is left to Western states under the federal Clean Water Act, which authorizes beneficial reuse of water “of good enough quality” in states west of the 98th meridian, which roughly demarcates the arid West.
Navajo lands include the Navajo Nation as well as off-reservation lands held in trust for the tribe. Sources: New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, U.S. Census Bureau
Anson Stevens-Bollen/Santa Fe Reporter
Some states have already approved some reuse of produced water outside oilfields, though not for green energy and without the significant investment proposed by New Mexico. In California, produced water is used for irrigation in the Central Valley; in Wyoming, it is used for livestock watering and irrigation; and in Pennsylvania, it has been approved for discharge into the Susquehanna River.
In Texas, meanwhile, pilot projects are being conducted with cotton irrigation, and the state has permitted discharge to streams and rivers if it meets water quality standards. Texas and Colorado have also created produced water consortiums to study treatment and reuse outside oilfields.
Some scientists are calling for more federal oversight of such projects. “It’s almost guaranteed that if the particular state does not require much more rigorous testing, there are going to be hazardous chemicals that are going to be spread on the land, or make their way into waterways,” said Schettler.
“I think it’s pretty clear that the current regulatory landscape is not adequate to truly protect public health or the environment because of all these unknowns,” he added.
Taimur Shaikh, a senior policy adviser for the Environmental Protection Agency in the New Mexico region, and an adviser to the state’s produced water research consortium, emphasized that the EPA’s involvement in state consortiums working on regulations is minimal: “We’re trying to be engaged in an advisory capacity,” he told Undark. “But we are definitely not trying to steer any of them.”
Mike Hightower, pictured here at the hearing in August, is the program director of the New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium.
Adam Ferguson/Santa Fe Reporter
Meanwhile, produced water is “a very valuable water resource,” said Pei Xu, associate director for research and technology at the New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium. But, she added, it’s necessary to ensure that the treated water “will not cause any risks to human beings and to the environment.”
Permian produced water has been found to contain the naturally occurring radioactive metals radium and uranium; other metals like lithium and iron; ammonia; and volatile organic compounds including benzene and toluene. Oil and gas companies also add chemicals to their drilling fluids, including acids to dissolve minerals, biocides to kill bacteria that cause corrosion, surfactants to make the fluid thicker, and polymers to minimize friction during drilling operations.
Hightower, the consortium’s program director, said the results of their treatment projects have found “that there is no toxicity of the treated produced waters.”
Yet Shaikh of the EPA said that estimating the risk of exposure is challenging, because the chemical makeup depends on the geologic formation the water is drawn from. It’s a “complex mixture” composed of many different materials, he said, and “some have good toxicological data and some don’t.”
According to one literature review encompassing 129 studies, out of nearly 1,200 chemicals found in U.S. produced water, only 14 percent had “existing toxicity values” needed for risk assessment. In addition, some of the chemicals are considered proprietary, and aren’t disclosed by oil and gas companies.
“If you’re not cleaning up the water with these chemicals in mind, and you’re putting these unknown chemicals onto the landscape in the water,” Schettler said, “it’s very difficult to conclude that you know that it’s safe.”
Given produced water’s myriad components, it takes numerous processes to remove them. First, oil and grease must be separated and filtered. Then targeted chemicals are removed with adsorbents — solids that contaminants adhere to, including sawdust and activated carbon. Other substances are removed with ultraviolet disinfection or oxidation. Salts are removed through processes like reverse osmosis or thermal distillation. Finally, if the water is to be used for groundwater recharge to aquifers or potable use, it may also need disinfection or pH adjustment.
Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as “forever chemicals,” have also been found in Permian produced water, including samples tested by Xu. She speculates it was a result of contamination, but according to a 2023 Physicians for Social Responsibility report, Permian oil and gas operators have injected wells with these chemicals, which are notoriously difficult to remove.
“I think it’d be very hard to find one treatment that truly addresses all the components that you might find within produced water,” Shaikh said.
Another safety issue, Xu said, is that exposure to the combined chemicals “may have a synergistic effect” that isn’t revealed with analysis of individual chemicals. As a result, Xu and her colleagues have begun toxicity studies to look at the effects of what she calls “the whole effluent” on plants and animals. Hightower said he hoped this toxicity testing “will become the standard for all the states to use.”
At the moment, though, Schettler said treatment technologies “are very energy intensive, and so they’re going to be expensive.” And Seth Shonkoff, an environmental health scientist and executive director of California-based research institute PSE Healthy Energy, said, “There’s not off-the-shelf, affordable ways to monitor” all the chemicals in produced water.
But Hightower said that with disposal costs rising due to increasing volumes of water and stricter regulations, “We’re at a point where this is going to be cost effective for us.” In a 2023 presentation, the cost to treat Permian produced water was $0.75 to $1.20 per barrel, while disposal costs are on track to come close to $1.20 per barrel next year, according to Hightower.
The treatment process produces another challenge: “You may have cleaned up the water to a level that you’re happy with,” Schettler said, “but you have this hazardous waste left to get rid of.” That could be reinjected into disposal wells, the current protocol for produced water. But if it exceeds regulations for radioactivity, it would be considered hazardous and require more expensive disposal.
Some proponents, meanwhile, say the lithium-rich waste could prove valuable. “We can use it as a source for mineral recovery,” Xu said, and the waste also contains ammonia, magnesium, and calcium, all used in agriculture and manufacturing.
Kenney, the Environment Department secretary, noted that water itself is a valuable commodity, and produced water is just a “commodity in waiting.”
Meanwhile, he added, evolving regulations in other states could create competition for produced water. If Texas moves to allow treated produced water reuse in agriculture or other applications, Kenney said, “New Mexico’s unusable produced water will be sold, I predict, to Texas companies.”
Already, an estimated one-third of the state’s produced water is transported to Texas via trucks or pipelines for disposal because of New Mexico’s stricter permitting requirements, according to the Ground Water Protection Council. After New Mexico (along with Texas and Oklahoma) experienced an increase in earthquakes due to the injection of produced water underground, the state enacted stricter disposal regulations.
Source: Jiag et al, Water 2021
Anson Stevens-Bollen/Santa Fe Reporter
Yet environmental advocates are concerned about the risk of produced water transport. According to state records of spills reported by operators, there were 938 incidents of produced water spills in 2023, with reported amounts lost in one spill reaching 4,200 barrels, or approximately 176,400 gallons.
New Mexico’s second-largest petroleum-producing region, the San Juan basin, produces far less oil, but contains significant cultural resources. The basin overlaps with parts of the Navajo Nation and off-reservation Navajo trust lands. And other Indigenous groups have ancestral roots in the region, which includes Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a center of ancestral Pueblo sites.
Julia Bernal, an enrolled member of Sandia Pueblo and executive director of the Pueblo Action Alliance, said the greater Chaco area is “very important to our cultural lifeways and existence.”
The region is already impacted by oil and gas production, Bernal said, and produced water is being trucked to disposal sites in the area. If a new market for produced water emerges, she said, “it’s going to increase the risk of more produced water spills.”
Mario Atencio, a Navajo organizer, said: “The impacts to the groundwater are just too dangerous to think about. The whole area has all these springs. In the desert, those are incredibly sacred cultural resources to Indigenous people, especially Navajo people.”
Governor Lujan Grisham has vowed to return to the legislature in 2025 to seek funding for the Strategic Water Supply, and the Water Quality Control Commission will deliberate on proposed rules for produced water discharge later this year.
Yet consortium scientist Xu said she and her colleagues “still have a lot of ongoing research” and need more time and funding before they determine that treated produced water is safe for reuse.
For some critics, the governor’s proposal is a distraction from other conservation efforts: Bernal said it’s disingenuous for the state to claim its plan advances water conservation, when there have been “many, many years of advocacy” by local groups for “water resiliency projects that would really be about conserving water, fixing aging infrastructure,” and addressing tribal needs.
Shonkoff, the environmental health scientist, frames the debate in terms of balancing risk: “One risk is being able to be resilient in the face of drought,” he said, while another is “using emerging sources of water that may present risks to humans and the environment.”
And public health advocates like Schettler say the competing demands on finite water resources from the agricultural sector, growing cities, and the oil and gas industry, amplified by climate change, are only going to get worse.
“There’s a tremendous need to figure out what to do,” he said.
Thousand-foot-long ships chug through the Panama Canal’s waters each day, over the submerged stumps of a forgotten forest and by the banks of a new one, its canopies full of screeching parrots and howler monkeys. Some 14,000 pass through its locks every year, their decks stacked high with 6 percent of the world’s commercial goods, crisscrossing the paths of tugboats on the voyage between oceans.
In early 2023, the weather pattern known as El Niño ushered in a drought that choked traffic through the canal, dropping water levels in Lake Gatun, the canal’s main reservoir, to record lows and revealing the tops of trees drowned when the canal was created at the start of the last century. It takes 52 million gallons of water to get a cargo ship through the canal’s locks, and by December, only 22 of the usual 36 ships were allowed to make the passage each day. Some vessels opted for lengthy routes around Africa instead, while others bid as much as $4 million to skip the queue that had grown to more than a hundred ships.
Over a year later, the water is rising and the logjam has cleared, thanks to increased rainfall as well the Panama Canal Authority’s water management and a recently installed third-set of water-recycling locks. But the problems are sure to reappear: El Niño returns every 2 to 7 years, and when it does, climate change will continue kicking it into higher gear. Panama’s growing urban population also needs drinking water – much of it sourced from the same Lake Gatun that feeds the canal’s locks.
“This means that if we do not increase water capacity in about a decade, we will not be able to provide water to the citizens,” said Óscar Ramírez, the president of the canal authority’s water resources committee, during a press conference this summer, according to the newspaper La Estrella de Panamá.
A view of exposed tree stumps in Gatun Lake in Colon, Panama in August 2023.Daniel Gonzalez / Anadolu Agency via Getty
With a future crisis seeming inevitable, the canal authority is turning to a long-contemplated solution: Dam the neighboring Río Indio to create a new reservoir, which could be tapped to replenish the canal when the water levels drop, and dig a 5-mile-long tunnel to connect it to the canal. The idea effectively got the greenlight this summer when the Supreme Court struck down an old law, and in doing so, expanded the canal authority’s jurisdiction to include the Río Indio basin. In total, the project would likely take six more years and $1.6 billion. Once the reservoir is built, Ramírez told reporters, both locals and the canal will have all the water they need for another 50 years.
Filling the reservoir would submerge about 17.7 square miles of land, currently home to more than 2,000 Panamanians, according to La Estrella de Panamá. Building the dam will require relocating schools, health centers, and churches that serve them. An additional 12,000 people, many of them farmers, live in the surrounding area.
Humans have been building dams for thousands of years, but such mega dam projects are a hallmark of economic development in modern times. According to the International Displacement Monitoring Centre, dams displaced an estimated 80 million people worldwide during the 20th century, and information about their fate is scarce. The canal authority acknowledges the hardship that moving would impose on people, and has said that they won’t begin construction until they’ve consulted with these residents and heard their concerns.
“I think there’s often a better alternative than building a new dam, but obviously dams are still going to be built,” said Heather Randell, an assistant professor of global policy at the University of Minnesota who has studied the impact of dam projects on communities. In her research, she found that people forced to move often lose their social networks and livelihoods, and wind up in poverty. In Vietnam, construction of the Son La Hydropower dam in the mid 2000s displaced 90,000 people and moved them to smaller plots of farmland. On average, incomes fell by 65 percent.
Those living nearby are often disrupted, too. As the diverted water upsets the ecosystem, neighboring areas might have trouble finding food, or see diseases spread more quickly. In Africa, for instance, decades of research shows multiple instances of schistosomiasis, a chronic disease caused by parasitic worms, spiking near dam projects and man-made reservoirs. In many regions, climate change is amplifying these problems.
Residents of El Limón, a town in the Río Indio river basin, walk past a multi-grade school building.Tova Katzman for Concolón Magazine
Although there is no harm-free way to displace people, Randell says, compensating them fairly for their lost livelihoods and land can help. In the 1970s, the government of Panama promised to make such payments to thousands of Indigenous people from the Kuna and Emberá communities who had to relocate for a large hydroelectric dam in Panama’s Darién Province. In 2014, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that the government never made these payments and failed to provide titles to protect their new lands, leaving them vulnerable to invasion by illegal settlers. Nowadays, Randell says, there’s “definitely been improvements in recognizing that if you’re going to displace a bunch of people you should be fairly compensating them.”
The canal authority says it plans to compensate residents, with the aim of improving or maintaining their quality of life. “If a person has livestock, we must preserve that livestock even if they are displaced, because it is their livelihood,” said Ricaurte Vásquez Morales, the Panama Canal Authority’s administrator, according to Estrella de Panama’s reporting. According to El Siglo, another national newspaper, the authority has held meetings with more than 1,600 people living in the area that would be flooded.
Randell says that community activism can also help mitigate the risks to people and the environment. In Brazil, decades of protests against the Belo Monte dam project, which began in 1979, drew international attention and put pressure on developers – resulting in the cancellation of the original project in 2002. When it was relaunched shortly after, the plans were scaled back significantly. Before the dam could be opened in 2016, at least 20,000 people had to move to make way for its construction. “Although it might not stop the project outright, it can still make some positive impact on how bad the project is going to be for people or for the environment,” Randell said.
Panama has recently seen a surge of such environmental activism. Last year, hundreds of protesters marched through cities and blocked roads after Panama’s legislature extended Minera Panamá’s operating contract for Cobre Panama, the largest open-pit copper mine in Central America. Panama’s Supreme Court declared the contract unconstitutional in November 2023 and the mine has since ceased operations. According to La Prensa, the canal authorities are actively trying to avoid a repeat of these protests as they negotiate with the towns affected by the proposed Río Indio reservoir. (The Panama Canal Authority did not respond to Grist’s repeated requests for comment.)
People from dozens of these towns in the provinces of West Panama, Colón, and Coclé have been protesting against damming the Rio Indo since the environmental impact study for the project was conducted between 2017 and 2020. Last year, a coalition of farmers representing districts from these provinces — some of whom were already uprooted by the copper mine — signed a community agreement to reject the reservoir, while also calling for the closure of Minera Panamá. Since the Supreme Court’s decision to expand the canal authority’s jurisdiction in July, leaders of the same groups have continued organizing meetings and voicing their concerns to media outlets. Last month, a poll of families living on the banks of the Río Indio, conducted by a University of Panama sociology professor, found 90 percent are opposed to the dam. Meanwhile, the canal authority began a census to count the number of families in the river’s basin, and set up a hotline for their questions.
Panama’s Canal Administrator Ricaurte Vásquez Morales speaks during a press conference at the authority’s headquarters in Panama City in September 2023.Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty
The last time work on the Panama Canal required upending entire towns was when it was first constructed, more than a century ago. A treaty ratified in 1904 gave the United States eminent domain over the Canal Zone — the power to seize any property within a parcel of land that encompassed the entire 50-mile length of the canal’s future waterways and 5 miles on either side of it. Some 40,000 people were displaced from the Zone to create the canal and the lakes attached to it.
“The flooding became the only story, and it’s not the complete story,” said Marixa Lasso, a historian at the Panama Center for Historical, Anthropological and Cultural Research in Panama City. “It was used as an excuse to expel people that did not need to be expelled.” Instead, she says, many towns were displaced to create exclusively American towns, where families of expatriates who worked on the canal, known as Zonians, lived for generations.
U.S. control of the region continued until a 1977 treaty, signed by President Jimmy Carter and the Panamanian military dictator Omar Torrijos, relinquished the canal to Panama at the end of 1999. Lasso said what separates the present-day from the past is that the decision over how to handle the canal now rests with the Panamanian government, giving citizens a greater say over their own fate. She says it’s important to consider alternatives, and if the only solution requires displacing people, history shows the importance of keeping communities intact and close to their original lands.
“Last time, we were not able to have a say in what happened,” Lasso said.
Rural La Paz County, Arizona, positioned on the Colorado River across from California, is at the center of a growing fight over water in the American Southwest. At the heart of the battle is a question: Should water be treated as a human right, to be allocated by governments with the priority of sustaining life? Or is it a commodity to be bought, sold and invested in for the greatest profits?
South America is experiencing its worst forest fire season in nearly two decades, with millions of acres burning across several countries. The blazes come amid the region’s worst drought on record, and are no surprise to climate scientists who have seen this coming for decades.
In Brazil, the continent’s largest country, about 59 percent of the country is facing drought conditions — an area roughly half the size of the United States — and Amazon basin rivers are flowing at historic lows. Three of the six vast ecosystems that define the country — the Amazon, the Cerrado and the Pantanal wetlands — are parched and burning.
“We are facing one of the worst droughts in history,” said Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute. The fires, she said, are the most extreme since 2005 and will continue until the rains come, which is typically in October but are no longer a guarantee. “We don’t know if rain is going to come.”
The proximate causes of the ongoing carnage are intentional fires that escape into the forest, and the naturally occurring El Nino weather pattern that is creating dry conditions. But experts say the compounding effects of climate change are making the crisis far worse, and the consequences are in line with what scientists have been warning could become the norm.
“This is exactly what all the climate models have been predicting for 20 years or more,” said Steve Schwartzman, senior director of forest policy at the Environmental Defense Fund. Erika De Berenguer Cesar, a tropical forest ecologist at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, worries that, absent dramatic action, people could one day look back at 2024 as a typical year. “It’s going to get much, much worse.”
Drier weather means drier forests and when ranchers or farmers set fires to clear land, a higher likelihood that they will lose control of them. While Alencar notes that Indigenous communities have used small-scale fires to manage land for centuries, the forest was humid enough to keep them largely contained. Climate change has altered that reality, she said, making it so that “any fire activity caused by humans can actually have a huge impact.”
Deforestation is now a major driver of forest fires, particularly in the Amazon. Not only does clearing the land create more opportunities for fire to spread, but losing the Amazon, which stretches across 2.5 million square miles, means losing a critical carbon sink for planet-warming emissions. That further deepens the climatic changes that are exacerbating fire risks.
“It seems to me that things are getting worse, year after year after year,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on a recent trip to the drought-ridden state of Amazonas, where all 62 municipalities have declared a state of emergency. More than 340,000 people have reportedly been affected.
Lula’s government took office in 2023 on a pledge to crack down on illicit deforestation of the Amazon, which reached unprecedented heights under his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. Although deforestation has plummeted dramatically, the rainforest continues dwindling as people continue to set fires that spread.
This largely human-induced providence is one way that the Amazonian conflagrations differ from those raging in other parts of the world, such as the American West. Another distinction is the biological scale of what’s at stake: The Amazon is home to 10 percent of the world’s biodiversity and one-fifth of its fresh water, and it was never meant to burn.
“They’ve never burned, they’ve never coexisted with the fire,” Guillermo Villalobos, a political scientist focusing on climate science at Bolivian nonprofit Fundación Solon, told ABC News. “This is terribly tragic for the ecosystem and the world.”
Simon Kitol’s 25-acre farm in western Kenya teems with maize, tomatoes, and beans, but also an invasive menace: Prosopis juliflora, better known asthe mathenge plant. Its long roots steal water from his crops, and the shrub takes up valuable room for growing food. Kitol’s livestock also dine on the mathenge pods, which are loaded with sugar, causing even more problems.
“It damages their teeth, and eventually the cows or goats die,” Kitol said. The thickets also provide cover for predators like wild dogs and hyenas. “They hide there because it is so thick that you can’t see them. At night, when the goats or sheep walk around, they are attacked and killed.”
Last year, experts with Penn State’s PlantVillage project, which helps smallholder farmers adapt to climate change, arrived to train Kitol and others in the area on a clever way to turn mathenge from a problem into an asset. Workers gather up those troublesome weeds — biomass — and convert it into biochar, concentrated carbon that they “charge” with nutrients by mixing it with manure. Farmers then apply the mixture to their fields, sometimes planting grass that provides fodder for livestock. Kitol said that the biochar helps his soils retain water and improves their fertility, leading to higher yields.
Well beyond Kenya, biochar is having a moment: The worldwide market was worth $600 million last year, and could rise to over $3 billion next year. Anywhere people are producing waste biomass — corn stalks, weeds, dead trees — they’re also producing a powerful tool for sequestering carbon and improving soils. And if farmers can prove how much biomass they’re turning into biochar, they can prove how much carbon they’re putting back into the ground. Through a group like PlantVillage, a company can then pay those farmers to offset its carbon emissions. (Biochar in general accounts for over 90 percent of durable carbon credits that have already been delivered worldwide.)
So with biochar, farmers are getting a new source of income and a way to better retain rainwater and boost yields. They’re helping mitigate climate change while adapting to its ravages. “Helping to solve an invasive species and land degradation problem, and produce biochar at the same time, is amazing,” said James Gerber, a data scientist who studies agriculture at the nonprofit climate group Project Drawdown. “Anything that gets money into the hands of smallholder farmers in Africa is probably just a good thing. But if it’s part of a functional, verifiable carbon-credit program, even better.”
The trick to making biochar is pyrolysis. As people have known for millennia, if you expose biomass to very high temperatures but in a low oxygen environment, it doesn’t combust into all-consuming flames; it turns into a kind of charcoal. Companies can do this with big industrial chambers, producing the biochar you can buy for your garden. Smallholder farmers can do it by digging a pit and adding biomass in layers, which restricts oxygen to the smoldering fire at the bottom. A simple kind of metal kiln does the same.
A kon-tiki kiln turns biomass into biochar. PlantVillage
Whatever the method, the plant material isn’t fully combusting and billowing smoke. With biochar, you end up with concentrated, solid carbon. “It’s essentially coal,” said David Hughes, founder of PlantVillage. “It goes into the ground and it doesn’t break down, and this is because of the temperature you’ve exposed it to.”
Because biochar is so spongy, it helps the soil retain more water — an especially welcome trait given the worsening droughts in Africa and elsewhere. But that sponginess also demands special care when applying to a field. “If you just put biochar into the soil, it will suck up all the nutrients in there, and your plants will do worse,” Hughes said. “So you have to charge it with nutrients. You can do that with compost or NPK — nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium — blends.”
Traditionally, a farmer might burn piles of waste like corn stalks, emitting carbon into the atmosphere. If different farms across a landscape are doing this after a harvest, air quality plummets and imperils human health.
So for a group like Biochar Life, which provides carbon removal offsets for biochar, the first step is to get a farmer to stop processing their waste biomass the old way. “We need to prove that the farmer didn’t burn it or just leave it there and let the biomass decompose and create methane,” said Aom Kwanpiromtara Suksri, the co-founder and global head of development and compliance at Biochar Life, which has offices in Asia and Africa and has formed a partnership with PlantVillage.
Grass grows on Kitol’s farm. PlantVillage
To be sure, carbon offset systems have been plagued with problems. One is a perverse incentive to deforest an area and plant trees again, selling those credits to companies. Where there’s been deforestation from logging or agriculture, planting a bunch of a single species of tree doesn’t create a proper ecosystem. There’s no boost to biodiversity, and tree plantations don’t sequester nearly as much carbon as a real forest.
By contrast, Biochar Life says its offset system is easier to quantify, and that it’s so far distributed more than $300,000 to farmers, and $265,000 to local teams that verify the credits. “We can’t generate a credit until we’ve proven that we’ve generated biochar, and that biochar has been charged and put back into the ground,” said Matt Rickard, Biochar Life’s chief operating officer.
Then there’s an issue of permanence: If farmers plant a bunch of trees and a drought strikes, and those trees all wilt or catch on fire, their carbon is going right back into the atmosphere. Scientists are still working out how long biochar can last in different kinds of soils and climates, but indications are that it can last thousands or possibly millions of years. And compared to waiting for a tree to grow and capture carbon, adding biochar to soil sequesters the carbon in the ground immediately.
“Biochar, it’s kind of chemically locked in — it’d be very difficult to reverse that,” Gerber said. “For me, that is the most important reason that biochar has greater potential for carbon credits.”
And unlike planting a new forest and walking away, farmers can keep producing biomass, charging it with nutrients, and adding it to the soil year after year. At the very least, a smallholder farmer like Kitol is getting a better handle on an invasive species while boosting yields and preparing his soils for the drier times ahead. “I see the future of biochar as promising,” Kitol said. “Biochar will be widely used as more people recognize its benefits.”
No matter where you live, extreme weather can hit your area, causing damage to homes, power outages, and dangerous or deadly conditions. If you’re on the coast, it may be a hurricane; in the Midwest or South, a tornado; in the West, wildfires; and as we’ve seen in recent years, anywhere can experience heat waves or flash flooding.
Living through a disaster and its aftermath can be both traumatic and chaotic, from the immediate losses of life and belongings to conflicting information around where to access aid. The weeks and months after may be even more difficult, as the attention on your community is gone but civic services and events have stalled or changed drastically.
Grist compiled this resource guide to help you stay prepared and informed. It looks at everything from how to find the most accurate forecasts to signing up for emergency alerts to the roles that different agencies play in disaster aid.
An aerial view shows flooding in Merced, California following a “bomb cyclone” in January 2023.
Josh Edelson / AFP
Where to find the facts on disasters
These days, many people find out about disasters in their area via social media. But it’s important to make sure the information you’re receiving is accurate. Here’s where to find the facts on extreme weather and the most reliable places to check for emergency alerts and updates.
Your local emergency manager: Your city or county will have an emergency management department, which is part of the local government. In larger cities, it’s often a separate agency; in smaller communities, fire chiefs or sheriff’s offices may manage emergency response and alerts. Emergency managers are responsible for communicating with the public about disasters, managing rescue and response efforts, and coordinating between different agencies. They usually have an SMS-based emergency alert system, so sign up for those via your local website (Note: Some cities have multiple languages available, but most emergency alerts are only in English.) Many emergency management agencies are active on Facebook, so check there for updates as well.
Local news: The local television news and social media accounts from verified news sources will have live updates during and after a storm. Follow your local newspaper and television station on Facebook or other social media, or check their websites regularly.
Weather stations and apps: The Weather Channel, Apple Weather, and Google will have information on major storms, but that may not be the case for smaller-scale weather events, and you shouldn’t rely on these apps to tell you if you need to evacuate or move to higher ground.
National Weather Service: This agency, also known as NWS, is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and offers information and updates on everything from wildfires to hurricanes to air quality. You can enter your zip code on weather.gov and customize your homepage. The NWS also has regional and local branches where you can sign up for SMS alerts. If you’re in a rural area or somewhere that isn’t highlighted on its maps, keep an eye out for local alerts and evacuation orders, as NWS may not have as much information ahead of time.
Cal Fire firefighters livestream images and data from efforts to control and contain the Park Fire on July 29 near Chico, California.
David McNew/Getty Images
These can often be expensive to create, so contact your local disaster aid organizations, houses of worship, or charities to see if there are free or affordable kits available. Try to gather as much as you can ahead of time in case shelves are empty when a storm is on the way.
Some of the most important things to have:
Water (one gallon per person per day for several days)
Food (at least a several-day supply of non-perishable food) and a can opener
Medicines and documentation of your medical needs
Identification and proof of residency documents (see a more detailed list below)
Battery-powered or hand crank radio, batteries, flashlight
First aid kit
Masks, hand sanitizer, and trash bags
Wrench or pliers
Cell phone with chargers and a backup battery
Diapers, wipes, and food or formula for babies and children
Food and medicines for any household pets
Don’t forget: Documents
One of the most important things to have in your emergency kit is documents you may need to prove your residence, demonstrate extent of damage, and vote. FEMA often requires you to provide these documents in order to receive financial assistance after a disaster.
Government issued ID, such as a drivers’ license for for each member of your household
Proof of citizenship or legal residency for each member of your household (passport, green card, etc.)
Social Security card for each member of your household
Documentation of your medical needs, such as medications or special equipment including oxygen tanks, wheelchairs, etc.
Health insurance card
Car title and registration documents
Pre-disaster photos of the inside and outside of your house and belongings
Copy of your homeowners’ or renters’ insurance policy
For homeowners: copies of your deed, mortgage information, and flood insurance policy, if applicable
For renters: a copy of your lease
Financial documents such as a checkbook or voided check
You can find more details about why you may need these documents here.
A volunteer assesses the remains of a charred apartment complex in the aftermath of a wildfire in Lahaina, western Maui, Hawaiʻi in 2023. Yuki Iwamura/AFP via Getty Images
Disaster aid 101
It can be hard to know who to lean on or trust when it comes to natural disasters. Where do official evacuation orders come from, for example, or who do you call if you need to be rescued? And where can you get money to help pay for emergency housing or to rebuild your home or community. Here’s a breakdown of the government officials and agencies in charge of delivering aid before, during, and after a disaster:
Emergency management agencies: Almost all cities and counties have local emergency management departments, which are part of the local government. Sometimes they’re agencies all their own, but in smaller communities, fire chiefs or sheriff’s offices may manage emergency response and alerts. These departments are the first line of defense during a weather disaster. They’re responsible for communicating with the public about incoming disasters, managing rescue and response efforts during an extreme weather event, and coordinating between different agencies. Many emergency management agencies, however, have a small staff and are under-resourced.
Much of the work that emergency managers do happens before a disaster: They develop response plans that lay out evacuation routes and communication procedures, and they also delegate responsibility to different government agencies like the police, fire, and public health departments. Most counties and cities publish these plans online.
In most cases, they are the most trustworthy resource in the days just before and just after a hurricane or other big weather event. They’ll send out alerts and warnings, coordinate evacuation efforts, and direct survivors and victims to resources and shelter.
You can find your state emergency management agency here. There isn’t a comprehensive list by county or city, but if you search your location online you’ll likely find a website, a page on the county or city website, or a Facebook page that posts updates.
Law enforcement: County sheriffs and city police departments are often the largest and best-staffed agencies in a given community, so they play a key role during disasters. Sheriff’s departments often enforce mandatory evacuation orders, going door-to-door to ensure that people vacate an area. They manage traffic flow during evacuations and help conduct search and rescue operations.
Law enforcement agencies may restrict access to disaster areas for the first few days after a flood or fire. In most states, city and county governments also have the power to issue curfew orders, and law enforcement officers can enforce these curfews with fines or even arrests. In some rural counties, the sheriff’s department may serve as the emergency management department.
Lexington Firefighters’ swift water teams rescue people stranded by extreme rain in Lost Creek, Kentucky in 2022.
Michael Swensen/Getty Images
Governor: State governors control several key aspects of disaster response. They have the power to declare a state of emergency, which allows them to deploy rescue and repair workers, distribute financial assistance to local governments, and activate the state National Guard. The governor has a key role in the immediate response to a disaster, but a smaller role in distributing aid and assistance to individual disaster victims.
In almost all U.S. states, and all hurricane-prone states along the Gulf of Mexico, the governor also has the power to announce mandatory evacuation orders. The penalty for not following these orders differs, but is most often a cash fine. (Though states seldom enforce these penalties.) The state government also decides whether to implement other transportation procedures such as contraflow, where officials reverse traffic flow on one side of a highway to allow larger amounts of people to evacuate.
HUD: The Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, also spends billions of dollars to help communities recover after disasters, building new housing and public buildings such as schools — but this money takes much longer to arrive. Unlike FEMA, HUD must wait for Congress to approve its post-disaster work, and then it must dole out grants to states for specific projects. In some cases, such as the aftermaths of Hurricane Laura in Louisiana or Hurricane Florence in North Carolina, it took years for projects to get off the ground. States and local governments, not individual people, apply for money from HUD, but the agency can direct you to FEMA or housing counselors.
A homeowner hangs a sign that reads “FEMA please help make Mexico Beach great again” on a house damaged by Hurricane Michael in Florida in 2018.
Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images
FEMA
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is the federal government’s main disaster response agency. It provides assistance to states and local governments during large events like hurricanes, wildfires, and floods. FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
FEMA is almost never the first resource on the ground after a disaster strikes. In order for the agency to send resources to a disaster area, the state’s governor must first request a disaster declaration from the president, and the president must approve it. For large disasters such as Category 4 or 5 hurricanes, this typically happens fast. For smaller disasters, like severe rain or flooding events, it can take weeks or even months for the president to grant a declaration and activate the agency. FEMA has historically not responded to heat waves.
FEMA is broken into regional offices and offers specific contacts and information for each of those, as well as for tribal nations. You can find your FEMA region here.
FEMA has two primary roles after a federally declared disaster:
Contributing to community rebuilding costs: The agency helps states and local governments pay for the cost of removing debris and rebuilding public infrastructure. During only the most extreme events, the agency also deploys its own teams of firefighters and rescue workers to help locate missing people, clear roadways, and restore public services. For the most part, states and local law enforcement conduct on-the-ground recovery work. (Read more about FEMA’s responsibilities and programs here.)
Individual financial assistance: FEMA gives outfinancial assistanceto individual people who have lost their homes and belongings. This assistance can take several forms. FEMA gives out pre-loaded debit cards to help people buy food and fuel in the first days after a disaster, and may also provide cash payments for home repairs that your insurance doesn’t cover. The agency also provides up to 18 months of housing assistance for people who lose their homes in a disaster, and sometimes houses disaster survivors in its own manufactured housing units or “FEMA trailers.” FEMA also sometimes covers funeral and grieving expenses as well as medical and dental treatment.
In the aftermath of a disaster, FEMA offers survivors:
A one-time payment of $750 for emergency needs
Temporary housing assistance equivalent to 14 nights’ stay in a hotel in your area
Up to 18 months of rental assistance
Payments for lost property that isn’t covered by your homeowner’s insurance
And other forms of assistance, depending on your needs and losses
If you are a U.S. citizen or meet certain qualifications as a non-citizen and live in a federal disaster declaration area, you are eligible for financial assistance. Regardless of citizenship or immigration status, if you are affected by a disaster you may be eligible for crisis counseling, disaster legal services, disaster case management, medical care, shelter, food, and water.
FEMA representatives take information from people displaced by Hurricane Ian in Estero, Florida in 2022.
Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post via Getty Images
FEMA also runs the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides insurance coverage of up to $350,000 for home flood damage. The agency recommends that everyone who lives in a flood zone purchase this coverage — and most mortgage lenders require it for borrowers in flood zones — though many homes outside the zones are also vulnerable. You must begin paying for flood insurance at least 30 days before a disaster in order to be eligible for a payout. You can check if your home is in a flood zone by using this FEMA website.
How to get FEMA aid: The easiest way to apply for individual assistance from FEMA is to fill out the application form ondisasterassistance.gov. This is easiest to do from a personal computer over Wi-Fi, but you can do it from a smartphone with cellular data if necessary. This website does not become active until the president issues a disaster declaration.
Some important things to know:
FEMA will require you to create an account on the secure website Login.gov. Use this account to submit your aid application.
You can track the status of your aid application and receive notifications if FEMA needs more documents from you.
If FEMA denies your application for aid, you can appeal, but the process is lengthy.
Visiting a FEMA site in your area after a disaster: FEMA disaster recovery centers are facilities and mobile units where you can find information about the agency’s programs as well as other state and local resources. FEMA representatives can help you navigate the aid application process or direct you to nonprofits, shelters, or state and local resources. Visit this website to locate a recovery center in your area or text DRC and a ZIP Code to 43362. Example: DRC 01234.
A woman looks over her apartment in Fort Myers, Florida, after Hurricane Ian inundated it with floodwaters in 2022.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
What to expect after a disaster
Disasters affect people in many different ways, and it’s normal to grieve your losses — personal, professional, community — in your own time. Here are a few resources if you need mental health support after experiencing an extreme weather event.
The National Center for PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, on what to expect after experiencing a disaster.
The American Red Cross has disaster mental health volunteers they often dispatch to areas hit by a disaster.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, has a fact sheet on managing stress after a disaster. The agency has a Disaster Distress Helpline that provides 24/7 crisis counseling and support. Call or text: 1-800-985-5990
After a disaster is an especially vulnerable time. Beware of scams and make sure to know your rights.
Be wary of solicitors who arrive at your home after a disaster claiming to represent FEMA or another agency. FEMA will never ask you for money. The safest way to apply for aid is through FEMA’s official website: disasterassistance.gov.
Be cautious about hiring contractors or construction workers in the days after a disaster. Many cities require permits for rebuilding work, and it’s common for scammers to pose as contractors after a disaster.
Renters can often face evictions after a disaster, so familiarize yourself with tenant rights in your state.
Residents of Paradise, California visit the town’s planning department to file permitting applications to re-build homes and other structures after the devastating 2018 Camp Fire.
Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Image
What to keep in mind before, during, and after a disaster
The most important thing to consider during a disaster is your own, your family’s, and your community’s safety. The National Weather Service has a guide for hurricanes and floods; FEMA has a guide for wildfires; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a guide for extreme heat safety.
A few potentially life-saving things to remember:
Never wade in floodwaters. They often contain harmful runoff from sewer systems and can cause serious illness and health issues.
If it’s safe to do so, turn off electricity at the main breaker or fuse box in your home or business before a hurricane to prevent electric shock.
If you lose power, never operate a generator inside your home. Generators emit carbon monoxide, a colorless and odorless gas that can be fatal if inhaled.
Did we miss something? Please let us know by emailing community@grist.org.
Noam Chomsky (95) famous dissident and father of modern linguistics, considered one of the world’s leading intellectuals, is recovering from a stroke he suffered at age 94 and now living with his wife in Brazil. According to a report in Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now d/d July 2, 2024, this past June Brazilian President Lula personally visited Chomsky, holding his hand, saying: “You are one of the most influential people of my life” personally witnessed by Vijay Prashad, co-author with Noam Chomsky, The Withdrawal (The New Press).
Indeed, Noam Chomsky is established as one of the most influential intellectuals of the 21st century.
A pre-stroke video interview with Chomsky conducted at the University of Arizona is extraordinarily contemporary and insightful with a powerful message: What Does the Future Hold Q&A With Noam Chomsky hosted by Lori Poloni-Staudinger, Dean of School of Behavioral Sciences and Professor, School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona.
Chomsky joined the School of Behavioral Sciences in 2017 and taught “Consequences of Capitalism.”
This article is a synopsis of some of Chomsky’s responses to questions, and it includes third-party supporting facts surrounding his statements about the two biggest risks to humanity’s continual existence.
What Does the Future Hold?
Question: geopolitics, unipolar versus multipolar
Chomsky: First there are two crises that determine whether it is even appropriate to consider how geopolitics will look in the future: (1) threat of nuclear war (2) the climate crisis.
“If the climate crisis is not dealt with in the next few years, human society is essentially finished. Everything else is moot unless these two crises are dealt with.”
(This paragraph is not part of Chomsky’s answer) Regarding Chomsky’s warning, several key indicators of the climate crisis are flashing red, not green. For example, nine years ago 195 nations at the UN climate conference Paris ‘15 agreed to take measures to mitigate CO2 emissions to hold global warming to under 1.5°C pre-industrial. Yet, within only nine years of that agreement amongst 195 nations, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial for the first time in human history for a 12-month period from February 2023 to January 2024 and now fast approaching danger zones. Obviously, nations of the world did not follow their own dictates, and if not them, who will?
Paleoclimatology has evidence of what to expect if the “climate crisis,” as labeled by Chomsky, is not dealt with (The following paragraph is also not part of Chomsky’s answer): “While today’s CO2-driven climate change scenario is unprecedented in human history, similar circumstances existed in the geological record that give us an idea of what to expect in the way of global sea level rise, and the process that will get us there. About 3.2 million years ago, during the Pliocene epoch, CO2 levels were about 400 ppm (427 ppm today) and temperatures were 2-3°C above the “pre-industrial” temperatures of 1850-1880. At the same time, proxy data indicate global sea level was about 52 feet (within a 39-foot to 66-foot range) higher than today.” (Source: The Sleeping Giant Awakens, Climate Adaptation Center, May 21, 2024)
Maybe that is why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) strongly suggests keeping temperatures ideally below 1.5°C and certainly not above 2.0°C pre-industrial.
Chomsky on World Power: Currently the center of world power, whether unipolar or multipolar is very much in the news. This issue has roots going back to the end of WWII when the US established overwhelming worldwide power. But now the Ukraine war has the world very much divided with most of world outside of the EU, US and its allies calling for diplomatic settlement. But the US position is that the war must continue to severely weaken Russia.
Consequently, Ukraine is dividing the world, and it shows up in the framework of unipolar versus multipolar. For example, the war has driven the EU away from independent status to firm control by the US. In turn the EU is headed towards industrial decline because of disruption of its natural trading partners, e.g., Russia is full of natural resources that the EU is lacking, which economist have always referred to as a “marriage made in heaven,” a natural trading relationship that has now been broken. (footnote: EU industrial production down 3.9% past 12 months)
And the Ukrainian imbroglio is cutting off EU access to markets in China e.g., China has been an enormous market for German industrial products. Meanwhile, the US is insisting upon a unipolar framework of world order that wants not only the EU but the world to be incorporated within something like the NATO system. Under US pressure NATO has expanded its reach to the Indo-Pacific region, meaning NATO is now obligated to take part in the US conflict with China.
Meantime, the rest of the world is trying to develop a multipolar world with several independent sectors of power. The BRICS countries Brazil, Russia, India, China, Indonesia, South Africa, want an independent source of power of their own. They are 40% of world economy that’s independent of US sanctions and of the US dollar.
These are developing conflicts over one raging issue and one developing issue. Ukraine is the raging issue; the developing issue is US conflict with China, which is developing its own projects in Eurasia, Africa, Middle East, South Africa, S9uth Asia, and Latin America.
The US is determined to prevent China’s economic development throughout the world. The Biden administration has “virtually declared a kind of war with China” by demanding that Western allies refuse to permit China to carry out technological development.
For example, the US insist others do not all0w China access to any technology that has any US parts in it. This includes everything, as for example, Netherlands has a world-class lithographic industry which produces critical parts for semi-conductors for the modern high-tech economy. Now, Netherlands must determine whether it’ll move to an independent course to sell to China, or not… the same is true for Samsung, South Korea, and Japan.
The world is splintered along those lines as the framework for the foreseeable future.
Question: Will multinational corporations gain too much power and influence?
Chomsky suggests looking at them right now… US based multinationals control about one-half of the world’s wealth. They are first or second in every domain like manufacturing and retail; no one else is close. It’s extraordinary power. Based upon GDP, the US has 20% of world GDP, but if you look at US multinationals it’s more like 50%. Multinationals have extraordinary power over domestic policy in both the US and in other capitalistic countries. So, how will multinationals react when told they cannot deal with a major market, like China?
How does this develop over future years? The EU is going into a period of decline because of breaking relationships in trade and commercial business with the East. Yet, it’s not sure that the EU will stay subordinate to the US and willingly go into decline, or will the EU join the rest of the world and move into a more complex multipolar world and integrate with countries in the East? This is yet to be determined. For example, France’s President Emmanuel Macron (2017-) has been vilified and condemned for saying that after Russia is driven out of Ukraine, a way must be found to accommodate Russia within an international system, an initial crack in the US/EU relationship.
Threat of nuclear warquestion: Russia suspended the START Nuclear Arms Treaty with the US and how important is this to the threat of nuclear war?
Chomsky: It is very significant. It is the last remaining arms control treaty, the new START Treaty, Trump almost cancelled it. The treaty was due to expire in February when Biden took over in time to extend it, which he did.
Keep in mind that the US was instrumental in creating a regime which somewhat mitigates the threat of nuclear war, which means “terminal war.” We talk much too casually about nuclear war. There can’t be a nuclear war. If there is, we’re finished. It’s why the Doomsday Clock is set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s been.
Starting with George W. Bush the US began dismantling arms control. Bush dismantled the ABM Treaty, a missile treaty very significantly part of the arms control system and an enormous threat to Russia. So, the dismantling allowed the US to set up installations right at the border of Russia. It’s a severe threat to Russia. And Russia has reacted.
The Trump administration got rid of the INF Treaty, the Reagan-Gorbachev treaty of 1987 which ended short-range missiles in Europe. Those missiles are now back in place on the borders of Russia. Trump, to make it clear that we meant business, arranged missile launches right away upon breaking of the treaty.
Trump destroyed the Open Skies Treaty which originated with Eisenhower stating that each side should share information about what the other side was doing to reduce the threat of misunderstanding.
Only the new START Treaty remains. And Russia suspended it. START restricts the number of strategic weapons for each side. The treaty terminates in 2026, but it’s suspended by Russia anyway. So, in effect there are no agreed upon restraints to increasing nuclear weapons.
Both sides already have way more nuclear weapons than necessary; One Trident nuclear submarine could destroy a couple hundred cities all over the world. And land based nuclear missile locations are known by both sides. So, if there is a threat, those would be hit immediately. Which means if there’s a threat, “you’d better send’em off, use’em or lose’em.” This obviously is a very touchy, extraordinarily risky situation because one mistake could amplify very quickly.
The new START Treaty that’s been suspended by Russia did restrict the enormous excessive number of strategic weapons. So, we should be in negotiations right now to expand it, restore it, and reinstitute the treaties the US has dismantled, the INF Treaty, Reagan-Gorbachev treaty, ABM Treaty, Open Stars Treaty should all be brought back.
Question: Will society muster the will for change for equity, prosperity, and sustainability?
Chomsky: There is no answer. It’s up to the population to come to grips with issues and say we are not going to march to the precipice and fall over it. But it’s exactly what our leaders are telling us to do. Look at the environmental crisis. It is well understood that we may have enough time to control heating of the environment, destruction of habitat, destruction of the oceans which is going to lead to total catastrophe. It’s not like everybody will die all at once, but we’re going to reach irreversible tipping points that becomes just a steady decline. To know how serious it is, look at particular areas of the world.
The Middle East region is one of the most rapidly heating regions of the world at rates twice as fast as the rest of the world. Projections by the end of the century at current trajectories show sea level in Mediterranean will rise about 10 feet.
Look at a map where people live, it is indescribable. Around Southeast Asia and peasants in India are trying to survive temperatures in the 120s where less than 10% of population has air conditioning. This will cause huge migrations from areas of the world where life will become unlivable.
Fossil fuel companies are so profitable that they’ve decided to quit any sustainable efforts in favor of letting profits run as fast and as far as possible. They’re opening new oil and gas fields that can produce another 30-40 years but at that point we’ll all be finished.
We have the same issue with nuclear weapons as with the environment. If these two issues are not dealt with, in the not-too-distant future, it’ll be all over. The population needs to “have the will” to stop it.
Question: How do we muster that will?
Chomsky: Talk to neighbors, join community organizations, join activist’s groups, press Congress, get out into the streets if necessary. How have things happened in the past? For example, back in the 1960s small groups of women got together, forming consciousness-raising groups and it was 1975 (Sex Discrimination Act) that women were granted the right of persons peers under US domestic law, prior to that we’re still back in the age of the founding fathers when women were property Look at the Civil Rights movement. Go back to the 1950s, Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat on a bus that was planned by an organized group of activists that led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, big change… in 1960 a couple of black students in No. Carolina decided to sit in at a lunch counter segregated. Immediately arrested, and the next day another group came… later they became organized as SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinated Committee. Young people from the North started to join. Next freedom buses started running to Alabama to convince black farmers to cast a vote. It went on this way, building, until you got civil rights legislation in Washington.
What’s happening right now as an example of what people can do? The Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act, IRA. It’s mostly a climate change act. The only way you can get banks and fossil fuel companies to stop destroying the world is to bribe them. That’s basically our system. But IRA is not the substantial program that Biden presented. It is watered down. The original came out of Bernie Sander’s office. As for the background for that, young people, from the Sunrise Movement, were active and organizing and sat in on Congressional offices. AOC joined them. A bill came out of this, but Republican opposition cut back the original bill by nearly 100% They are a denialist party. They want to destroy the world in the interest of private profit. The final IRA bill is nowhere near enough.
Summation: Chomsky sees a world of turmoil trying to sort out whether unipolar or multipolar wins the day with the Ukrainian war serving as a catalyst to change. Meanwhile, the EU carries the brunt of its impact. Meantime, nuclear arms treaties have literally dissolved in the face of a tenuous situation along the Russia/EU borders with newly armed missiles pointed at Russia’s heartland. In the face of this touch-and-go Russia vs. the West potentially explosive scenario, the global climate system is under attack via excessive fossil fuel emissions cranking up global temperatures beyond what 195 countries agreed was a danger zone.
Chomsky sees a nervous nuclear weapons-rattling high-risk world flanked by unmitigated deterioration of ecosystems that global warming steadily, assuredly takes down for the count, as global temperatures set new records. He calls for individuals to take action, do whatever necessary to change the trajectory of nuclear weaponry and climate change to save society. Chomsky offered several examples of small groups of people acting together, over time, turning into serious protests and ultimately positive legislation.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Mead, Anthropologist)
The Rio Grande is no longer a reliable source of water for South Texas.
That’s the sobering conclusion Rio Grande Valley officials are facing as water levels at the international reservoirs that feed into the river remain dangerously low — and a hurricane that could have quenched the area’s thirst turned away from the region as it neared the Texas coast.
Although a high number of storms are forecast this hurricane season, relief is far from guaranteed as the drought drags on.
For now, the state’s most southern cities have enough drinking water for residents. However, the region’s agricultural roots created a system that could jeopardize that supply. Cities here are set up to depend on irrigation districts, which supply untreated waters to farmers, to deliver water that will eventually go to residents. This setup has meant that as river water for farmers has been cut off, the supply of municipal water faces an uncertain future.
This risk has prompted a growing interest among water districts, water corporations, and public utilities that supply water to residents across the Valley to look elsewhere for their water needs. But for several small, rural communities that make up a large portion of the Valley, investing millions into upgrading their water treatment methods may still be out of reach.
A former channel of the Rio Grande, or resaca, winds through agriculture fields near Los Fresnos, on Wednesday. The Rio Grande Valley is facing a drought, greatly affecting farmers in the region.
Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune
A new water treatment facility for Edinburg will undoubtedly cost millions of dollars, but Tom Reyna, assistant city manager, believes the high initial investment will be worth it in the long run.
“We see the future and we’ve got to find different water alternatives, sources,” Reyna said. “You know how they used to say water is gold? Now it’s platinum.”
For Edinburg, one of the fastest growing cities in the Valley, the need for water will only grow as its population does. While the city hasn’t faced a water supply issue yet, the ongoing water shortage in South Texas combined with the growing population has put local officials on alert for the future of their water supply.
The Falcon and Amistad International reservoirs feed water directly into the Rio Grande. And while water levels have been low, cities and public utilities have instituted water restrictions that limit when residents can use sprinkler systems and prohibit the washing of paved areas.
Cities have priority over agriculture when it comes to water in the reservoirs. Currently, the reservoirs have about 750,000 acre feet, of which 225,000 acre feet are reserved for cities.
Jim Darling, chair of the Rio Grande Regional Water Planning Group and former McAllen mayor, points at rivers and tributaries shown on a map at the South McAllen Water Plant, in McAllen. Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune
Of those 225,000 acre feet, each city or public utility or water supply corporation can purchase what are known as “water rights” which grant permission from the state to use that water.
But without water for farming, more and more of the water that cities own is being lost just in transporting the water to their facilities, and that’s directly due to the loss of water for farmers.
This relationship with the agriculture industry arose because irrigation districts were created here first. Cities came after, and because they used less water, they were set up to depend on irrigation districts.
Water meant for residential use rides atop irrigation water to water treatment plants. Without irrigation water, cities start to use water they already own to push the rest of their water from the river to a water treatment facility. It’s referred to as “push water.” Much of that water is lost for this purpose.
When water levels at the reservoirs got dangerously low in in the late 1990s, the average city would only get about 68 percent of the water it owned because the rest would be used as push water, according to Jim Darling, board member of the Rio Grande Regional Water Authority and chair of the local water planning group, a subset of the Texas Water Development Board.
Filtered groundwater is desalinated through reverse osmosis at the Southmost Regional Water Authority brackish groundwater treatment facility in Brownsville, Texas.
Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune
The board is tasked with managing the state’s water supply.
Darling, a former McAllen mayor, has been trying to get cities to think of ways to increase their water supply.
As cities try to temper water demand by issuing restrictions on water usage, Darling said public utilities need to think about the drought not just from the standpoint of managing demand but also by increasing supply.
Darling has been floating the idea of creating a water bank of push water so that water districts can get by without having to go through the process of obtaining approval from the state for more water.
These discussions have been ongoing with the watermaster from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, who ensures compliance with water rights. The talks are still preliminary, but a conversation with the watermaster’s office in early July revealed that three or four of the Valley’s 27 irrigation districts were out of water.
“Something needs to be done,” Darling said.
Edinburg’s proposed water plant is still in the early planning stages, but the goal is to stave off water woes by turning to water sources underground.
The plan is to dig up water from the underground aquifers as well as reuse wastewater. The two sources of water would be blended and treated through reverse osmosis.
Reserve osmosis consists of pushing water through membranes, large cylinders that filter the water. This is done several times until the water is pure and meets drinking water standards set by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
This method isn’t new.
By implementing this practice, Edinburg is following in the footsteps of the North Alamo Water Supply Corporation, a utility that supplies water to eastern Hidalgo County, Willacy County, and northwestern Cameron County.
Members of the public listen to Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr. as he begins to lead a water conservation meeting with various stakeholders across the Rio Grande Valley at the county courthouse in Brownsville. Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune
After the drought in 1998, North Alamo turned to reverse osmosis in the early 2000s.
Its facilities currently treat about 10 million gallons of water per day through reverse osmosis, which represents one-third of all the water it treats. The rest is surface water from the river, but the utility aims to switch that split, treating two-thirds through reverse osmosis and only a third of surface water.
“We’ve got that mindset that we have to get away from the river,” said Steven P. Sanchez, general manager of North Alamo. “We have to start going to reverse osmosis.”
Hidalgo County officials are trying to take a more “innovative” approach to the area’s water problems.
In April, county officials touted a proposed regional water supply project, dubbed the Delta Water Reclamation Project, that would capture and treat stormwater to be used as drinking water.
The project, expected to cost $60 to 70 million, started off as a project to mitigate flooding by drawing water away from a regional drainage system. But now, plans include a water plant that would take daily runoff and treat it through reverse osmosis.
“We are the first drainage district to do something like this and of course that’s an exciting thing for us, to be able to do something that’s so innovative and green,” said Hidalgo County Commissioner David Fuentes, who sits on the drainage district board. “But it comes with a lot of obstacles and a lot of unknowns.”
One challenge will be financing the water plant. Drainage districts are limited on the bonds they can issue in exchange for a loan. Obtaining funds from the Texas Water Development Board would also be an uphill battle since a drainage district doesn’t fit the usual metrics that a water supply corporation does.
County leaders made the case for their project before a Texas Senate committee hearing in May on water and agriculture, requesting that legislative leaders direct the water development board to give a higher consideration to projects like theirs or to provide a grant program their project would qualify for.
The county drainage district already completed a pilot test of the project and those results are now under TCEQ for review. Leaders expect TCEQ will give them the green light as well as instructions on how to design the plant and steps they need to take to ensure water quality.
Fuentes said they expect that review to be completed early in the legislative session, which would give them a better idea of what they need to ask legislators for.
North Alamo Water Supply Corporation General Manager Steven P. Sanchez at the NAWSC water treatment facility in Edinburg. Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune
If the project becomes a reality, the county would sell to water corporations like North Alamo.
In Cameron County, located on the east end of the Valley, the Brownsville Public Utilities Board was also motivated by drought conditions to reduce dependence on the river. With help from partners in the Southmost Regional Water Authority, the public utilities board spearheaded the construction of a desalination facility that also employs reverse osmosis.
Despite its growing popularity in the Valley, desalination has its drawbacks. The practice has faced pushback from environmentalists over the disposal of the concentrated salts and because the process requires a lot of energy.
Southmost and North Alamo hold permits from TCEQ to discharge the concentrate, or reject water, into the Brownsville Ship Channel and a drainage ditch that flows to the Laguna Madre, respectively.
Representatives for both entities said the salinity of the concentrate is less than the salinity of the bodies of water that are receiving that discharge.
“All the aquatic life that’s there, the plant life and everything that feeds off that water is not being harmed at all,” Sanchez said. “We monitor that.”
Sanchez said another solution would be drying beds, a process of evaporating the water into sludge, and injecting the water about 20,000 feet back into the ground.
North Alamo has also made improvements to its energy consumption. In May, the water corporation upgraded its 16-year-old water filtering equipment, reducing the amount of energy used to create the pressure to push the water through its filtration system.
Sanchez said reverse osmosis has also been more efficient for North Alamo.
Rigoberto Ortañes looks at a rising pool of water, flooding the excavation site, as a crew works on upgrading pipes and valves at a North Alamo Water Supply Corporation water plant in Donna.
Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune
The utility’s surface water treatment plant treats about 2.7 million gallons of water daily, while the reverse osmosis plant treats 3 million gallons. It’s also become cheaper in the last few years. Treatment of surface water costs $1.21 per thousand gallons while reverse osmosis costs $0.65 per thousand gallons, according to Sanchez, who said reverse osmosis would still be cheaper even with depreciation.
This wasn’t always the case, he said, but the high cost of chemicals has driven up the cost of treating surface water. But where surface water treatment is cheaper is in the initial cost to establish it.
Sanchez estimated that the initial capital investment for reverse osmosis treatment capable of treating a million gallons per day would conservatively cost about $6 to 7 million, while a surface treatment facility of the same capacity would cost $3 to 4 million.
Southmost’s plans to double its plant’s capacity would cost an estimated $213 million.
Reyna, the Edinburg assistant city manager, agreed that the initial investment would be the biggest cost for the city, but believes it will end up paying for itself.
Not all cities have that as a viable option, though. That initial cost can be an insurmountable hurdle for smaller, rural communities, leaving them unable to invest in solutions. The state could possibly alleviate some of that cost.
During the last legislative session, lawmakers established the Texas Water Fund with a $1 billion dollar investment that will go to a number of financial assistance programs at the Texas Water Development, including one that has never had funding before, called the Rural Water Assistance Fund.
This will be additional state funding to help rural communities with technical assistance on how to decide what kind of design and what kind of assistance is best for their community. This will help them navigate the process of applying for funding.
Plans for how the water development board will allocate funds to these new financial assistance programs will be released in late July.
Sarah Kirkle, the director of policy and legislative affairs at the Texas Water Conservation Association expects the state will provide interest rate reductions for loans that will be used on expensive projects.
However, the $1 billion allocated to the Texas Water Fund will not get very far.
“The needs for implementing this state water plan are something like $80 billion and those are outdated numbers that we’re looking to update in the new water planning cycle,” Kirkle said, adding that the plan doesn’t include the cost of wastewater or flood infrastructure.
She noted that the cost of water infrastructure is about two or three times what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic because of disruptions in the supply chain and additional federal requirements for federally-funded projects.
Many small communities also don’t have the resources to plan for their needs, Kirkle said, so many of them don’t participate in the water planning process, leaving no one to speak up for them.
“We really need to make sure that as we see additional water scarcity around the state, that our communities are engaged in planning for their needs and understand where they might have risks and where their water might not be reliable,” Kirkle said.
Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas Inc.
Mark Garcia can see that there’s no shortage of water in the Rio Grande this year. The river flows past his farm in central New Mexico, about 50 miles south of Albuquerque. The rush of springtime water is a welcome change after years of drought, but he knows the good times won’t last.
As the summer continues, the river will diminish, leaving Garcia with a strict ration. He’ll be allowed irrigation water for his 300 acres just once every 30 days, which is nowhere near enough to sustain his crop of oats and alfalfa.
For decades, Garcia and other farmers on the Rio Grande have relied on water released from a dam called El Vado, which collects billions of gallons of river water to store and eventually release to help farmers during times when the river runs dry. More significantly for most New Mexico residents, the dam system also supplies the city of Albuquerque with running water.
But El Vado has been out of commission for the past three summers, its structure bulging and disfigured after decades in operation — and the government doesn’t have a plan to fix it.
“We need some sort of storage,” said Garcia. “If we don’t get a big monsoon this summer, if you don’t have a well, you won’t be able to water.”
The failure of the dam has shaken up the water supply for the entire region surrounding Albuquerque, forcing the city and many of the farmers nearby to rely on finite groundwater and threatening an endangered fish species along the river. It’s a surprising twist of fate for a region that in recent years emerged as a model for sustainablewater management in the West.
“Having El Vado out of the picture has been really tough,” said Paul Tashjian, the director of freshwater conservation at the Southwest regional office of the nonprofit National Audubon Society. “We’ve been really eking by every year the past few years.”
Surface water imports from the El Vado system have generally allowed public officials in Albuquerque to limit groundwater shortages. This echoes the strategies of other large Western cities such as Phoenix and Los Angeles, which have enabled population growth by tapping diverse sources of water for metropolitan regions and the farms that sit outside of them. The Biden administration is seeking to replicate this strategy in water-stressed rural areas across the region, doling out more than $8 billion in grants to support pipelines and reservoirs.
But the last decade has shown that this strategy isn’t foolproof — at least not while climate change fuels an ongoing megadrought across the West. Los Angeles has lost water from both the Colorado River and from a series of reservoirs in Northern California, and Phoenix has seen declines not only from the Colorado but also from the groundwater aquifers that fuel the state’s cotton and alfalfa farming. Now, as Albuquerque’s decrepit El Vado dam goes out of commission, the city is trying to balance multiple fragile resources.
El Vado is an odd dam: It’s one of only four in the United States that uses a steel faceplate to hold back water, rather than a mass of rock or concrete. The dam has been collecting irrigation water for Rio Grande farmers for close to a century, but decades of studies have shown that water is seeping through the faceplate and undermining the dam’s foundations. When engineers tried to use grout to fill in the cracks behind the faceplate, they accidentally caused the faceplate to bulge out of shape, threatening the stability of the entire structure. The Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages the dam, paused construction and is now back at the drawing board.
Without the ability to collect irrigation water for the farmers, the Bureau has had no choice but to let the Rio Grande’s natural flow move downstream to Albuquerque. There’s plenty of water in the spring, when snow melts off the mountains and rain rushes toward the ocean. But when the rains peter out by the start of the summer, the river’s flow reduces to a trickle.
“We run really fast and happy in the spring, and then you’re off pretty precipitously,” said Casey Ish, the conservation program supervisor at the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, the irrigation district that supplies water to farmers like Garcia. “It just creates a lot of stress on the system late in the summer.” The uncertainty about water rationing causes many farmers to forego planting crops they aren’t sure they’ll be able to see to maturity, Ish added.
Construction crews attempt to repair the El Vado dam along the Rio Grande in New Mexico. The federal government has been unable to find a way to stop seepage behind the steel faceplate dam.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
The beleaguered dam also plays a critical role in providing water to the fast-growing Albuquerque metropolitan area, which is home to almost a million people. As the city grew over the past 100 years, it drained local groundwater, lowering aquifer levels by dozens of feet until the city got a reputation as “one of the biggest water-wasters in the West.” Cities across the region were mining their groundwater in the same way, but Albuquerque managed to turn its bad habits around. In 2008, it built a $160 million water treatment plant that allowed it to clean water from the distant Colorado River, giving officials a new water source to reduce their groundwater reliance.
The loss of El Vado is jeopardizing this achievement. In order for Colorado River water to reach the Albuquerque treatment plant, it needs to travel through the same set of canals and pipelines that deliver Rio Grande water to the city and farmers, “riding” with the Rio Grande water through the pipes. Without a steady flow of Rio Grande water out of El Vado, the Colorado River water can’t make it to the city. This means that in the summer months, when the Rio Grande dries out, Albuquerque now has to turn back to groundwater to supply its thirsty residential subdivisions.
This renewed reliance on groundwater has halted the recovery of local aquifers. The water level in these aquifers was rising from 2008 through 2020, but it slumped out around 2020 and hasn’t budged since.
“We have had to shut down our surface water plant the last three summers because of low flows in Albuquerque,” said Diane Agnew, a senior official at the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, which manages the region’s water. Agnew stresses that aquifer levels are only flattening out, not falling. Still, losing El Vado storage for the long run would be detrimental to the city’s overall water resilience.
“We have more than enough supply to meet demand, but it does change our equation,” she added.
The Bureau of Reclamation is looking for a way to fix the dam and restore Rio Grande water to Albuquerque, but right now its engineers are stumped. In a recent meeting with local farmers, a senior Reclamation official offered a frank assessment of the dam’s future.
“We were not able to find technical solutions to the challenges that we were seeing,” said Jennifer Faler, the Bureau’s Albuquerque area manager, in remarks at the meeting.
The next-best option is to find somewhere else to store water for farmers. There are other reservoirs along the Rio Grande, including one large dam owned by the Army Corps of Engineers, but repurposing them for irrigation water will involve a lengthy bureaucratic process.
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Reclamation told Grist that the agency “is working diligently with our partners to develop a plan and finalize agreements to help alleviate the lost storage capacity” and that it “may have the ability to safely store some water” for farms and cities next year.
In the meantime, farmers like Garcia are getting impatient. When a senior Bureau official broke the bad news at an irrigation district meeting last month, more than a dozen farmers who grow crops in the district stood up to express their frustration with the delays in the repair process, calling Reclamation’s announcement “frustrating” and “a shock.”
“If we don’t have any water for the long term, I have to let my employees go, and I guess start looking for ramen noodles someplace,” Garcia told Grist.
Even though there are only a handful of other steel faceplate dams like El Vado in the United States, more communities across the West are likely to experience similar infrastructure issues that affect their water supply, according to John Fleck, a professor of water policy at the University of New Mexico.
“We’ve optimized entire human and natural communities around the way this aging infrastructure allows us to manipulate the flow of rivers, and we’re likely to see more and more examples where infrastructure we’ve come to depend on no longer functions the way we planned or intended,” he said.
As the West gets drier and its dams and canals continue to age, more communities may find themselves forced to strike a balance between groundwater, which is easy to access but finite, and surface water, which is renewable but challenging to obtain. The loss of El Vado shows that neither one of these resources can be relied upon solely and consistently — and in an era of higher temperatures and aging infrastructure, even having both may not be enough.
Claudia Sheinbaum won a commanding victory in last month’s Mexican presidential election, winning almost 60 percent of the vote and securing legislative majorities for her left-wing Morena party. A former climate scientist and mayor of Mexico City, Sheinbaum dominated the polls after emerging as the successor to the popular outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Even as Sheinbaum prepares to take office, the city she ran between 2018 and 2023 is making global headlines as it suffers through an historic water crisis. Millions of low-income residents across the city rely on intermittent deliveries of contaminated groundwater, and even wealthier neighborhoods have seen their taps shut off as the city’s key reservoirs run dry. Not only that, but the city loses around 40 percent of its water supply to leaks in its underground pipes.
Sheinbaum tried to tackle these problems as mayor, pursuing projects to capture rainwater, restore depleted aquifers, and replace and upgrade aging pipes. But water experts and public officials who worked with Sheinbaum say she lacked the resources to turn around a crisis that has been decades in the making. The new power she will have as president, plus a wave of new leadership in the local and regional governments of Mexico City, could usher in a sweeping change in how one of the world’s most populous countries manages its water and adapts to climate-fueled drought.
“Water is her main concern,” said Armando Alonso Beltrán, the head of the water department for the state government in the Mexico City region and a friend of Sheinbaum’s. “It’s in her top priorities, and it always has been.”
Enrique Lomnitz, an engineer whose company, Isla Urbana, has built rainfall harvesting systems across the city, agreed that Sheinbaum made significant progress as mayor, but said the city still has a long way to go.
“She has a very good record, and she started a lot of paradigm-shifting programs that opened new possibilities for approaching the water crisis,” he told Grist. “But these are still very small things compared to the scale of the problem.”
That’s because Mexico’s water crisis is really several different crises. The shortage that captured global headlines this spring came about due to an extreme drought caused by the El Niño climate phenomenon. When spring rains failed to arrive, several key reservoirs that supply water to the city emptied out, forcing city officials to implement rotating water shutoffs in the wealthy neighborhoods that are fortunate enough to have consistent running water.
But these reservoirs only supply around 30 percent of Mexico City’s water, most of which goes to the wealthier neighborhoods in the city center. The rest of the metropolis draws water from underground aquifers that have been dwindling for decades, so much so that parts of the city have sunk by several feet. The water that does still come out of these aquifers is often contaminated with toxic chemicals.
A man carries a barrel for water in the Iztapalapa borough of Mexico City, which has seen a water crisis worsen for decades as underground aquifers run dry. Gerardo Vieyra / NurPhoto via Getty Images
The problem is not that there isn’t enough water to recharge these aquifers over time: Mexico City gets around 34 inches of rainfall a year, similar to Midwest states like Iowa. But the city has grown by millions of people in recent decades without investing in infrastructure to capture and distribute all that water. The critical forest that recharges the aquifer, known as the “Bosque del Agua” or “water forest,” has diminished over the past century due to logging and development. Meanwhile, the water authority has failed to maintain the residential water system, which has resulted in an astonishing amount of water being lost to leaks — more than 40 percent of the total water supply, one of the highest rates in the world.
Sheinbaum faced all these problems as mayor of Mexico City. In 2019, less than a year into her tenure, she announced a major effort to control these leaks, deploying dozens of “leak response brigades” that would locate and plug holes in the water grid. It’s hard to gauge how successful she’s been, said Lomnitz, because fixing a leak in one part of the system can increase water pressure in another part of the system and thus cause more leaks. And as the city sinks thanks to aquifer subsidence, more leaks appear.
“There’s like a Whac-a-Mole kind of thing happening,” said Lomnitz. “You fix the leaks here and they increase over there.” Despite Sheinbaum’s investment, the city is likely billions of dollars away from meaningful water savings from leak reduction.
“There were mixed results, mostly positive, from her time as mayor,” said Alonso. “But it’s hard to tell the final results, because the drought came last year and there was less water.”
Making the city “spongy” enough to catch and store falling rain is even harder given Mexico City’s idiosyncratic history. The city lies on a former lakebed that early Spanish colonists drained in the seventeenth century, and as a result it is prone to frequent flooding. The city’s leaders have spent the equivalent of billions of dollars over the past hundred years to build tunnels that can drain this floodwater away from the metropolis, including a massive 38-mile tunnel project that opened in 2019.
“Our issue has always been how to take out water from the city, and as we had this very rich aquifer and this amount of rain which is quite good, we never had this problem of scarcity,” said Loreta Castro Reguera, an architect who has worked on a number of water projects in Mexico City. The city also has a problem of “technological inertia” as it seeks to capture and harvest rainwater, added Castro Reguera: It uses the same tunnel system to flush out stormwater and sewage, which makes it almost impossible to treat and reroute rainwater for residential usage.
Since building a parallel pipe system for stormwater would be almost unthinkably expensive, the city’s best option is to start smaller, capturing rainwater at the household or neighborhood level. Sheinbaum started doing this as mayor through a number of innovative nature-based projects. For instance, the city transformed a former landfill near the city’s largest wastewater treatment plant into a restored wetland that filters and treats captured stormwater, yielding a new high-quality water supply. She also worked with Lomnitz’s Isla Urbana to install thousands of household catchment systems and boosted the budget for infrastructure repairs.
Another model comes from Sheinbaum’s incoming successor as the mayor of Mexico City, fellow Morena member Clara Brugada, who has her own record tackling water issues. Brugada, who will take office later this year, has served for almost a decade as the mayor of Iztapalapa, a large impoverished borough in the eastern part of the city. Iztapalapa has struggled for decades with crime and water shortages, but Brugada took major steps to replace faulty infrastructure and created several community spaces known as “utopias” that combine green space with free public services and recreational areas.
One of the banner projects in the borough was La Quebradora, a “hydraulic park” designed by Castro Reguera’s firm with support from the local government. The park captures stormwater to reduce flooding in nearby areas and funnels that water down into the aquifer, recharging groundwater and easing the local water shortage.
“The impulse needs to come from the government,” said Castro Reguera, describing the need for more projects like the one in Iztapalapa. “This might be a chance to put more of these projects in place.”
Incoming Mexico City mayor Clara Brugada, left, stands with Mexico’s president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum during an election celebration. Manuel Velasquez / Getty Images
Sheinbaum, however, will have to worry about water issues in areas far from Mexico City, because the country’s northern states are facing a very different water problem than the capital. In these states, which are much drier than the region around Mexico City, the problem is less poor management than it is a lack of supply. The vast majority of water in these areas goes to irrigate crops such as avocados and alfalfa, and another share supplies numerous mining operations, leaving very little leftover for residential use.
Sheinbaum and her predecessor López Obrador have tried to tackle this problem by curbing so-called water concessions, which grant farms and mines the exclusive right to tap rivers and aquifers. Before the election, López Obrador pushed a constitutional amendment that would have allowed the government to cut off water to mines during a drought, and Sheinbaum has signaled she too will support that measure. She has also reportedly called for a revamp of the national water law that would limit water use by farms, though this effort will likely face opposition from powerful agricultural interests. (Neither the president’s office nor the campaign offices of Sheinbaum and Brugada responded to Grist’s interview requests.)
In these northern states as well as in Mexico City, the water crisis is as much a problem of governance as it is one of physical shortage. The country’s national water authority has faced accusations of bribery and corruption for years, and the local authority in Mexico City has faced criticism as well for a lack of transparency about water quality. These are the same utilities that Lomnitz says have underinvested in infrastructure for decades.
But the conditions are ripe for a surge of investment. Sheinbaum holds the presidency, which will give her access to a much larger budget to invest in water storage and treatment projects. Brugada has promised to continue her focus on rainwater harvesting and environmental justice as the mayor of Mexico City. The new head of Mexico City’s regional government is also a member of the Morena party, and which means all the levels of government are aligned for the first time in decades.
Victor Magaña Rueda, an environmental scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who has studied climate impacts in Mexico City, told Grist that he believes Sheinbaum has the political will to turn around the trend of disinvestment and delay.
“She has a very profound knowledge of what the water crisis in Mexico is,” said Magaña. “She is more interested in environmental problems I would say than our president right now. But the important thing is that she knows that we cannot go on in a situation like we lived in for the past few years.”
Biblical flooding, scorching heat, collapsing grid system, animals crumbling, waters rising, crops wilting, economy on the brink, and millions displaced.
Welcome to the future of climate change… Pakistan.
If one could classify a global warming beta test as a success towards an ultimate goal of apocalypse, unfortunately, it has turned Pakistan into a country populated by millions of displaced people in the early chapters of a horror story with no ending in sight because it is likely to get worse. Pakistan has been thrashed back and forth from one year (2022) of biblical flooding to years of record-setting heat. Normality has fled, chased out by an ogre of darkened apocalypse in the making.
Wherefore, Inside Climate News d/d June 8, 2024 has a remarkable series entitled “Living on Earth”, which recently interviewed Rafay Alam, who is an environmental lawyer and a member of Pakistan’s Climate Change Council. The title of the interview: “As Temperatures in Pakistan Top 120 Degrees, There’s Nowhere to Run”. That interview is the basis for this article about a country of 240 million people at the brink of apocalypse.
Based upon Pakistan’s severe climate experience, here is what Rafay Alam concludes, a widely shared viewpoint throughout the Global South:
There is a significant denialism on climate change in places like the United States. And it angers me because I see people affected. I see animals affected. And this is a lived experience for the global majority, the Global South. It’s extremely infuriating to see people who’ve participated in this global warming deny it, deny any accountability, try and move on as if nothing’s happened and try and continue to make money and drive that bottom line.
There’s an adage of the 1950s “Ugly Americans” that lingers to this day outside of America’s borders. It pejoratively references Americans as loud, arrogant, self-absorbed, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, with ugly ethnocentric behavior, which also applies to U.S. corporate interests internationally. Regrettably, climate change is reviving this debasing dictum in a very big way, 70 years later. And people who think today’s sociopolitical atmosphere is poisoned, divided, and postured for trouble in the USA should look over their shoulders, as anger foments around the world with America a target. Trouble’s universal.
Rafay Alam resides in Lahore (pop. 13M) known as the “City of Gardens.” It is the cultural heart of Pakistan with exquisite arts, cuisine, and music festivals, known for filmmaking and the recognized home of the intelligentsia. Lahore is a sophisticated metropolis that’s a safe place to live. According to the World Crime Index, the city is safer than living in London, New York, or Melbourne.
Yet, life for millions in Pakistan has changed for the worse seemingly overnight. Today, the country experiences persistent heat waves over 120°F in some cities, and summer is just beginning. Anything approaching the normal rhythm of life of past decades has been overwhelmed by brutal severely damaging climate change. The country is still recovering from the biblical flooding of 2022 when normal rainfall turned voracious 400% to 800% beyond anything ever experienced, a torrential downpouring lasting weeks in regions of the country that do not drain into the Indus Basin. Thus, a 100-kilometer (62-mile) artificial lake formed, displacing 10 million and impacting 30 million, bringing in its wake $35B infrastructure damage, roads swept away, schools swept away, hospitals swept away. It will take a generation to rebuild. This is climate change in full blast mode.
Rafay Alam:
We’ve seen temperatures since the middle of May to the first of June currently more than 50 degrees Centigrade, which is well over 120°F. Lahore, where I live is 44°C today, which is about 111°F… I go for a walk in the evenings when the sun sets It’s not unpleasant, but I notice animals and birds collapsed to the ground looking for water, dogs on the side of the road unable to get up… Recently, it was 125°F, the hottest place on Earth, at Mohenjo-Daro, which is home to an ancient civilization.
Accordingly, Pakistan is not just experiencing a scorching heat wave, it is actively experiencing the climate crisis in all its variations on a real time basis. And according to meteorologists: “It’s going to stay hotter for longer.”
Climate change has wrought an economic nightmare, as Pakistan has sought flood relief that came as loans, not grants or aid, which has doubled Pakistan’s external debt in only two years. This is devastating for a country that is trying to regain its footing and rebuild an economy that climate change clobbered.
Nevertheless, the country is learning to live with devastating temperatures by changing life’s normal patterns. Schools are let out by 12:00 noon but shutdown entirely when temperatures rise too far, which is a common experience of late.
Of even more concern, and possibly the most dangerous scenario of all, the monsoon season is coming by the end of June, early July which will convert dry heat to extreme humid heat with deadly wet bulb temperatures. At 95°F and 70% humidity, it’ll impact the human body like 120°F. That’s deadly because at that level the human body cannot release heat by sweating. Rather, it bakes internal organs. Hmm- it’s been triple digits for some time now with daytime forecasts to remain in triple digits to the end of June, and likely beyond into the heart of the summer.
Agriculture is 20% of Pakistan GDP. And according to Alam, a leading English newspaper recently ran a headline about crops decimated in Pakistan by heat, cotton basically sizzling, maize, mangos, and other vegetables and fodder for cattle, expecting a decline of productivity. Nearly one-half of the Pakistani workforce is in agriculture and they’re being hammered down to the poverty line by unforgiving climate change.
This heat wave is a man-made event due to the greenhouse gases consumed and thrown into the atmosphere by the Global North since the industrial revolution These greenhouse gases have to stop. (Alam)
Meanwhile, he claims the country must adapt as soon as possible to an off-the-rails climate system fed by profit-motives outside of Pakistan. He suggests changes to agriculture by working on heat-resistant crops. Currently, no crops can withstand 50-plus Centigrade temperatures. And the water economy must learn to adapt as 90% of water goes to agriculture, which is 20% of GDP employing 40% of the workforce, which is at the poverty line.
Meanwhile, it is currently harvesting season. Agricultural workers are waking up when the sun rises for only a couple of hours of work before it gets too hot to work. When it’s too hot to work any longer, people congregate inside for shelter from the sun. But those who live near fields are warned that snakes and scorpions also seek cooler spaces, entering homes en masse seeking shelter.
Alam’s biggest concern is for most Pakistanis who are middle class, working class and at the poverty line, unable to withstand climate shocks much further. Moreover, there are really not many safe places for them to go to escape global heat, unless they have a rich friend.
Even heading to the Himalaya mountains for cooler terrain could be treacherous. There are over 3,000 glaciers that, due to global warming, form glacial lakes in the mountains. Over time, these blow apart in outburst of devastating unannounced floods bringing down mountainsides as roads and bridges are washed away leaving those seeking cool mountain air stranded. According to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, the Hindu Kush Himalaya is a “hotspot of risk” for outburst floods.
Pakistan, unfortunately, has become a proving ground for what climate change is capable of. And there’s no reason to expect it to remain confined to the borders of Pakistan.
Rafay Alam first became aware of climate change’s potential impact nearly 20 years ago when he saw Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount Classics, May 2006), which opened a lot of eyes. Yet, the nations of the world have failed to adequately confront the primary cause, burning fossil fuels, that fuels radical climate change that’s whiplashed Pakistan’s environment beyond limits.
Alam believes the basis of the legal systems and the international system can’t cope with an existential crisis such as climate change: “One of the worst ways to deal with something like climate change is to divide the world into 200 different countries and have them argue with each other.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -IPCC- is testament to this, 30 years later and CO2 is still increasing each year without missing a beat, targeting Pakistan. But, for certain, Pakistan is not an isolated case.
According to Alam, in conclusion:
Earth’s ecosystem has been in balance since the last ice age… That civilization is over… the way that we interact with each other- extremely heavy energy use, extremely heavy water use, incredibly consumptive of natural resources producing greenhouse gases for just about everything… It’s this behavior, this civilization, which is at risk. And yes, it is very much an apocalypse.
I recently attended a family affair in Upstate NY and was informed that climate change articles, like this one, are too negative, causing close relatives to shutdown and going so far as to ignore articles, too gloomy, too negative, do something more positive. My response: Analyzing the planet’s climate system by studying peer-reviewed scientific publications for over a decade, every year has gotten worse and worse, no letups, more negatives every year… there’s nothing positive about climate change to write about. And people need to know the truth about anthropogenic-led crashing of ecosystems.
Furthermore, one of the key reasons why many Americans don’t accept climate change as an existential issue is because they have been shielded from the most impactful events of climate change, from the truth as experienced by the rest of the world; e.g., Europe’s five-year average temperature has been running 2.3°C above pre-industrial, a danger zone according t0 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which, under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nearly 200 countries agreed to limit global warming to no more than 2.0° Celsius by 2100 to avoid significant and potentially catastrophic changes to the planet. Hmm. Ipso facto, 75% of Spain is at risk of desertification, according to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.
The USA, uniquely. happens to be located in a “global sweet spot” ideally within latitudes and longitudes that first attracted Europeans to a Garden of Eden setting, For example, during the mid-17th century in the words of William Wood of Boston, circa 1634 (Source: “Boston’s Flora and Fauna in the 1630s”, Boston Public Library):
For the Country it is as well watered as any land under the Sun, every family, or every two families having a spring of sweet waters betwixt them, which is far different from the waters of England being not so, but of a fatter substance, and of a more jetty colour; it is thought there can be so better water in the world.
The next commodity the land affords, is good store of Woods, & that not only such as may be needful for fuel, but likewise for the building of Ships, and houses, & Mils, and all manner of water-work about which Wood is necessary. The Timber of the Country grows straight and tall, some trees being twenty, some thirty-foot high, before they spread forth their branches…. Of these swamps, some be ten, some twenty, some thirty miles long, being preserved by the wetness of the soils wherein they grow.
Today, people in Asia and Europe and Central America do not complain about negtive climate articles, rather, they embrace it, believing that more exposure is necessary so people know how to bitch and moan and groan about the failure of political leaders to take heed of top-notch scientists’ warnings for decades that global warming, primarily caused by fossil fuels like CO2, eventually leads to ecosystem collapse and dangerous heatwaves and destructive droughts. Today, unrelenting heatwaves are rampant for all to see but could be only the beginning.
Regarding the Chomsky and UN warnings, it was June 2022 when the UN issued GAR2022, UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction shortly thereafter followed by Noam Chomsky as keynote speaker for the American Solar Energy Society 51st annual conference at the University of New Mexico.
The UN report, for the first time, brought into focus the challenge: “Escalating synergies of climate disasters, economic vulnerability, and ecosystem failures increasingly headed for a juggernaut of collapse.”
On the heels of the UN report about an impending “juggernaut of collapse,” Chomsky’s opening statement at the American Solar Energy Society echoed the UN’s statement:
We are at a unique moment in human history. Decisions that must be made right now will determine the course of future history if there is to be any human history, which is very much in doubt. There is a narrow window in which we must implement measures to avert cataclysmic destruction of the environment.
Today, there is compelling evidence that both the UN and Chomsky were dead-on correct. But Chomsky’s call for implementing measures to avert cataclysmic destruction of the environment have been mostly ignored. Now, two short years later. killer heat is consuming the lifeblood of megacities in some regions of the planet.
“Water sources are depleted around the world,” according to Victoria Beard, professor of city and regional planning, Cornell University: “Every year, more cities will face ‘Day Zero,’ with no water in their piped systems.” (Source: “This Mega-City is Running Out of Water: What Will 22 Million People do When the Taps Run Dry?” Phys.org, March 26, 2024.)
For example: Mexico City (22M pop.) could run dry this summer. Bogotá (8M pop.) recently started water rationing. Residents of Johannesburg (6M pop.) line up for municipal truck deliveries. South Delhi (2.7M pop.) announced a rationing plan on May 29th. Several cities of southern Europe have rationing plans on the table. In March 2024 China announced its first-ever National-Level Regulations on Water Conservation, a disguised version of water rationing. Global warming is the key problem as severe droughts clobber reservoirs. And global warming is a product of energy creation from fossil fuel emissions such s CO2.
According to Chomsky, the “Energy System” is the provocateur of global warming, and it has enormous institutional breadth, including fossil fuel companies, banks, and other financial institutions and a large part of the legal community. Accordingly, the Energy System’s political base is the Republican Party, and it is the main driving force for global warming which, in turn, threatens megacities with “Day Zero” or dry reservoirs. This is becoming prevalent around the globe.
The fact that the UN Global Assessment Report GAR2022 received little, or no media attention, explains how and why we are in deep trouble; the issue is simply ignored. Yet, it is the first-ever UN flagship global report with findings that current global policies are “accelerating the collapse of human civilization.” It should have been front page news. Importantly, the report does not suggest that collapse is a “done deal.” Rather, without radical change, it’s where the world is headed.
Alas, where is the “radical change” that the UN report said is necessary to prevent collapse? Answer: There is no radical change ongoing, planned, or discussed. Radical change has never been mentioned by any world-recognized authorities.
Celebrated weather historian Maximiliano Herrera, recently commented on global warming’s impact: “Thousands of records are being brutalized all over Asia, which is by far the most extreme event in world climatic history.” (Source: “Summer Heat Hits Asia Early, Killing Dozens as one Expert Calls it the ‘Most Extreme Event’ in Climate History”, CBS News, May 2, 2024.)
“The most extreme event in world climatic history” is a very strong characterization of the impact of climate change and global warming. Dangerous heat waves are sweeping the world like a scythe harvesting wheat and more people are being killed than reported by authorities, especially in India. There’ll never be accurate counts of the dead for public release. Some megacities are currently at knife’s edge of loss of drinking water for millions of residents. They’re not prepared. Water is trucked for firefighting in some megacities and to neighborhoods where residents are parched. This could have been prevented, but it wasn’t.
Of even more immediate concern, an Environmental Emergency has been declared for Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands by Mato Grosso do Sul, the Brazilian state containing most of Pantanal. The emergency has been declared as the number of fires surged by 980%, as of June 5th, well ahead of wildfire season which starts in July/August. This is one of the world’s largest wetlands (10 times Florida’s everglades) which has partially dried out due to ongoing severe drought. (Source: “Fires in Brazilian Wetlands Surge 980%, Extreme Drought Expected”, Reuters, June 7, 2024.)
The Pantanal is the world’s largest freshwater wetland stretching over parts of Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia offering unseen gifts to a vast swath of South America by regulating the water cycle upon which life depends. Its countless swamps, lagoons and tributaries purify water and help prevent floods and droughts. It stores untold amounts of carbon, helping to stabilize the world’s climate. It is one of the wonders of the world, but large areas are blazing afire because of severe drought; it’s global warming at work.
What to do? There are experienced capable people, such as Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, who believe that the failure of world leaders to listen to scientists for decades necessitates a changing of the guard. He’s organizing a worldwide movement.
In summation, the United Nations claims “radical change” is needed, and as stated by Noam Chomsky: “There is a narrow window in which we must implement measures to avert cataclysmic destruction of the environment.” But nobody is doing this on a radical change basis.
Meantime, if megacities run dry, what will millions of city residents do? The risks have never been more pronounced.
For years, a Saudi-owned hay farm has been using massive amounts of water in the middle of the Arizona desert and exporting the hay back to Saudi Arabia.
The farm’s water use has attracted national attention and criticism since Reveal’s Nate Halverson and Ike Sriskandarajah first broke this story more than eight years ago.
Since then, the water crisis in the American West has only worsened as megafarms have taken hold there. And it’s not just foreign companies fueling the problem: Halverson uncovers that pension fund managers in Arizona knowingly invested in a local land deal that resulted in draining down the groundwater of nearby communities. So even as local and state politicians have fought to stop these deals, their retirement fund has been fueling them.
Since we first aired this story in July, our reporting has spurred Arizona’s governor and attorney general into action.
On this week’s Reveal, learn about water use in the West, who’s profiting and who’s getting left behind.
For more of Halverson’s reporting into a global scramble for food and water, watch “The Grab.” By Center for Investigative Reporting Studios and director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, the film will be in theaters and available to stream starting June 14.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2023.
