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The coal-fired power plant that sat on Navajo Nation land in the northeastern corner of Arizona did not just generate electricity. It also drew water from the Colorado River, an essential input for cooling the plant’s machinery.
What happens to that water now that the plant is being decommissioned? Who gets to decide how it is used? In a drying region in which every drop of water is accounted for and parceled out, the stakes are high and the legal claims are unresolved.
The three players are the Navajo Nation, state of Arizona, and the federal government. The ground rules are established in decades-old interstate compacts and more recent federal laws. On the horizon are unsettled water rights claims and new infrastructure. A pipeline to deliver water to the Navajo Nation in Arizona is under construction today — but due to legal complexities there is no certainty that water will immediately flow through the pipes once the system is completed.
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The long-running dispute between Florida and Georgia over water resources reached the U.S. Supreme Court last week. The court will decide whether Georgia must cap its water use from the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint basin and allow more water to flow downstream to Florida.
The dispute began in the 1990s and has been entangled ever since by contentious negotiations and numerous court dates. The ACF basin, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico, is a hard-working watershed. It provides water for the city of Atlanta, farmers in Georgia, and oyster growers in Florida. Florida claims that Georgia is using more water than is necessary, depleting water downstream and subsequently destroying the oyster industry in Apalachicola Bay. Conversely, Georgia says a cap on the water supply from the basin will harm the Atlanta metro area and farmers who depend on the resource. It argues that oyster declines are a result of Florida’s mismanagement. |
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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 Taiwan, a sharp drought is forcing the tech industry to prepare for water rationing. Taiwan is one of the world’s top manufacturing sites for silicon chips that power everything from computers to cars to mobile phones.
- In research news, a new report from the World Wildlife Fund finds that nearly a third of global freshwater fish populations are endangered. The near mass extinction of freshwater fish has a number of causes, such as damming rivers, draining wetlands, and over-extracting water.
This week, Circle of Blue looks at whether Michigan is prepared for an era of climate change. |
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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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 | | Installation of the Fenner Nature Center onsite wastewater treatment system. Photo © Larry Stephens |
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Even before COVID-19, septic systems weren’t much of a priority in the Legislature. The last time an attempt was made to get Michigan statewide regulations for septic systems was in 2018, when two bills could have established state standards for septic systems, also known as “onsite wastewater systems,” and also have required regular inspections of those systems with the results of those inspections maintained by the then-Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Under the measures, a committee would have advised the DEQ, now the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, on standards.
Both bills made it to the House Committee on Local Government before stalling in late 2018 and then going no further. |
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| From Circle of Blue's Archives: |
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 | | Governor Stephen Roe Lewis, leader of the Gila River Indian Community, stands in the dry bed of the Gila River, outside of Sacaton, Arizona. Elected last year, Lewis proclaimed 2015 the Year of Our Water Rights for his tribe. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue |
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With the oldest claims to water, the Colorado River Basin's 29 federally recognized Indian tribes command a considerable role in directing the region’s future. Combined, they hold rights to a substantial portion of the Colorado River’s flow: roughly 20 percent, or 2.9 million acre-feet, which is more water than Arizona’s allocation from the river. The tribal share, moreover, will increase, perhaps by as much as hundreds of thousands of acre-feet as the 13 tribes without confirmed rights settle their claims with federal and state governments.
Years of careful negotiations, spurred by a desire to avoid long-running court battles, produced legal settlements that provide water for tribes, cities, and industries. Beneficial to all sides, the settlements were a catalyst for urban development and a tool for funding Indian water systems. Perhaps more importantly, the settlements are the foundation of a partnership, an inescapable union, between tribes and their neighbors, a union that will grow in importance as water becomes scarcer in the warming and drying American West.
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