Climate Point: Busy week for water news as scientists make electricity from thin air
Water runs through many of the top environmental and climate stories across the nation this week, from ongoing shortages in the Southwest to the potential effects of the Supreme Court decision on the Clean Water Act.
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. I'm Dinah Voyles Pulver, one of Paste BN's national climate and environment reporters.
On the Navajo Nation in Arizona, 73-year-old Percy Deal hauls water to his home every three weeks and uses it frugally. Joan Meiners with the Arizona Republic talked with Deal for a report on the need for water infrastructure, in light of a court case over the still-unquantified water rights of the Navajo people and the many ongoing struggles over declining water in the Colorado River basin. Nearly 10,000 homes on the Navajo Reservation have never had running water.
A breakdown of how three western states propose to reduce water use as part of a plan to assist the shrinking Colorado River is presented in this visual explainer, by graphic artists George Petras and Javier Zarracina. Will it be enough? It will help, but officials said additional measures will be needed
In California, officials moved a step closer to taking down a dam that's nearly a century old to help a watershed recover and improve passage for endangered steelhead trout. But first they have to know what the 780,000 cubic yards of sediment trapped behind it could mean for areas downstream.
Wetlands: Reporters in Milwaukee and Louisville looked at what the landmark Supreme Court decision Sackett v. EPA could mean for wetlands in their regions. In the case brought by an Idaho couple, the Court ruled Clean Water Act protections apply only to wetlands with a continuous surface connection to protected waters. Reporters at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel looked at what that could mean for Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River.
The decision cut much deeper than many had expected. "Without exaggeration, it's calamitous," Michael Washburn, executive director of Kentucky Waterways Alliance, told the Courier-Journal.
Speaking of clean water:
A variety of animal and human antibiotics were found consistently in water samples from rivers flowing into western Lake Erie, reported Keith Matheny with the Detroit Free Press. Researchers are concerned because that potentially contributes to the already rising global problem of bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics, said lead researcher Laura Johnson from Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio.
In Cape Cod, researchers are investigating how water circulates in Cape Cod Bay ahead of a proposal to release treated radioactive wastewater into the bay from a nuclear power station that's going to be decommissioned. Scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are launching a year long study, wrote Heather McCarron.
In Indiana, a manufacturing facility that's a subsidiary of BP must pay a $40 million penalty to settle charges its refinery violated federal law by releasing harmful pollutants into wastewater and the air, wrote Sarah Bowman at the Indianapolis Star.
Fire restoration: In Great Falls Montana, reporter David Murray looked at efforts to restore thousands of acres of forest after a devastating wildfire in 2021.
Electricity: Could electricity come from thin air? And not just during a thunderstorm? One group of researchers have been looking at the potential for harvesting electricity from humidity with an air-powered generator, reported Paste BN's Doyle Rice.
Hurricanes: Now that June has arrived, it's the official start of hurricane season in the Atlantic. Federal officials said they expect this season to be near normal activity, especially because of the potential El Niño in the Pacific, but it only takes one hurricane in your neighborhood to make it a really bad season.
Paste BN looked at why the West Coast doesn't look at hurricane season with the same fear and trembling as East Coast residents, with a visual explainer on how hurricanes form and how damage potential is measured. Another graphic compares the seasonal outlook to hurricane seasons of the past.
Read on for more, including needed repairs to the Mississippi River's lock and dam system, a court decision on a Nantucket wind farm and what to do when it's too hot to walk your dog.
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