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Even as snow melted and the lights flashed back on in Texas late last week, the harshest and most lingering lessons emerged, all of them expressed through the essential element that Americans take for granted: clean water. It wasn’t a matter of scarcity. Rather, like so many billions of people around the world, what Texans encountered after the lights turned on was unsparing difficulty in gaining access to clean water. Though it occurred in some of the world’s wealthiest cities and most exclusive suburbs, the image of Texans scavenging for water was hardly different in its basic form and drama than what occurs daily in rural India and Kenya.
Just as scientific models predicted, ruinous meteorological events in Texas – rain, wind, droughts, floods – now occur with much greater intensity. The question Texans face is whether to continue electing lawmakers who ignore the consequences of climate disruption, which many state leaders consider a scientific hoax.
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Even before an initial round of funding is distributed to states and tribes, Congress is preparing to add another $500 million to a first-ever federal assistance program for low-income households that owe money to their water departments.
The House Budget Committee on Monday marked up President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan,” a procedural move that sets the table for a House vote by the end of the week. The relief package includes $500 million to assist low-income households who are behind on their water bills. |
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| Minnesota officials announced a multi-step strategy to address PFAS contamination in the environment. Referred to as Minnesota’s PFAS blueprint, the plan will focus on three goals: to prevent PFAS pollution, to manage sources of already occurring PFAS, and to clean up contamination. The blueprint would add all PFAS to the state’s hazardous substance list and require all companies to report any use of the man-made chemicals. |
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For the news you need to start the week, tune into “What’s Up With Water” fresh on Monday’s on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and SoundCloud. Featured coverage from this week’s episode of What’s Up With Water looks at: In Southeast Asia, the Mekong River Commission said that water levels in the Mekong have fallen because Chinese dams upstream are limiting outflows. In the United States, 69 dams were torn down last year. That’s according to the conservation group American Rivers, which keeps an extensive database on the topic. In business news, Nestle announced that it would sell several North American water brands for $4.3 billion. This week Circle of Blue reports on the pandemic’s unequal impact on North Carolina water utilities and their customers. |
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| The Great Lakes Ready or Not project is produced by the Great Lakes News Collaborative, a partnership between Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now at DPTV and Michigan Radio that explores an essential question: Are Great Lakes residents and leaders ready for the stirred and shaken conditions that climatologists say we can expect? A new piece will be published every Tuesday over the next four months. |
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| | | Derelict fishing boats once used to fish Lake Superior. Photo © Lester Graham / Michigan Radio |
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The Great Lakes are warming. For the coldest and largest of the lakes, Lake Superior, that could mean a lot of changes. Researchers are still sorting out what the future might be, but a lot of it doesn’t look good.
Climate change is affecting Lake Superior in some volatile ways. Its surface temperature has been going up, but in wild fluctuations. The average wind speeds have been increasing five percent each decade since 1980. And Superior has been pounded by three five hundred-year to one thousand-year storm events in the past eight years. |
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| | | Larry Scheer collecting samples from Boyden Creek near Ann Arbor. Photo © Lester Graham / Michigan Radio |
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Rivers are in much better shape than when rivers such as the Rouge and Cuyahoga caught fire in the 1960s. But, with the growing challenges caused by climate change, people, colleges, governments, and non-profits will have to work together to find solutions. But it won’t be easy and it won’t be cheap.
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| | | Ice cover is just one of the several challenges to Michigan’s inland lakes. Photo © Lester Graham / Michigan Radio |
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Anglers and researchers are noticing a number of changes on inland lakes in the upper Midwest. Sometimes you can’t catch the fish you always found in your favorite lake in the past. Scientists say things have changed and more change is coming. It’s a trend that’s happening across the Great Lakes region.
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| From Circle of Blue's Archives: |
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| | | Photo © Brian Lehmann / Circle of Blue |
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Water, Texas is a five-part series on the consequences of the mismatch between runaway development and tightening constraints on the supply and quality of fresh water in Texas.
The story of Texas is the state’s devout allegiance to the principle that mankind has dominion over nature. In 2020, the pandemic, climate disruption, and ever-present challenges with water supply and use are writing a much different story of vulnerability to nature’s bullying, and to government’s uncertain capacity to adjust. |
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