Water

The pH levels in some rivers in Alaska and northern Canada have dropped to 2.3, comparable to the acidity of vinegar.

n Alaska, the most recent satellite imagery indicates that the affected rivers now cover an area more than 600 miles wide.

Crossposted from https://slrpnk.net/post/36654219

Antibiotics are accumulating in a major Brazilian river, especially during the dry season when pollution becomes more concentrated. Scientists even detected a banned drug inside fish sold for food, raising concerns about human exposure. A common aquatic plant showed promise in removing these chemicals from water—but it also altered how fish absorb them, creating unexpected risks.

Crossposted from https://beehaw.org/post/25185231

Public water supplies in America will need billions invested to meet the peak requirements of datacenters during the hottest periods of the year, even if their overall annual consumption is relatively modest.

A study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, acknowledges that water is an efficient means of cooling for server farms, which are looking to minimize their power usage.

But it warns that the growing water demand will lead to substantial peak withdrawals, which many communities in the US do not have the capacity to supply, particularly during the hottest days of the year.

Without new water efficiencies, datacenters across America may require 697 million to 1.45 billion gallons of extra peak water capacity per day by 2030, the study estimates. This compares with New York City's daily water supply of about a billion gallons.

Not like we have any other uses for water in a rapidly heating world.

Officials in Corpus Christi expect a “water emergency” within months and fully run out of water next year. That would halt jet fuel supplies to Texas airports, fuel a surge in gasoline prices and trigger an “economic disaster” without precedent, former officials said.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34794729

Undaunted, the activists in Santarém took on one of the US powerhouses of world trade. Cargill generates revenues of more than $160bn (£119bn) a year, employs 155,000 people and accounts for more than 70% of the soy and maize shipped through Santarém.

[...]

This interrupted one of the focal points of the global food trade because the Cargill facility in Santarém is a primary hub between the nation with the biggest farms – Brazil – and the country with the most numerous dining tables – China, which is the destination for most of the soy.

...which is fed to enslaved animals which the humans in China then eat.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34794706

Santarém, Pará, Brazil – On Monday, February 23, Brazil’s government announced the revocation of Decree 12,600/2025, which opened the door to the privatizing the Tapajós, Madeira, and Tocantins rivers for industrial waterways in the Amazon. The government confirmed the decision following a meeting in Brasília between Indigenous leaders Sônia Guajajara, Brazil’s Minister of Indigenous Peoples, and Guilherme Boulos, Minister of the Presidency’s General Secretariat. The announcement came amid an Indigenous occupation of Cargill’s port in Santarém, Pará State, and in the wake of growing national and international solidarity and extensive news coverage of the mobilization.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34758533

The paper is here

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34408415

• Tropical forests actively generate rainfall by releasing moisture into the atmosphere, with each square meter producing hundreds of liters of rain annually across surrounding regions. Clearing even small portions can measurably reduce precipitation, especially during dry seasons.
• Much of the rain that falls far inland originates from forests through long-distance moisture transport known as “flying rivers,” meaning farms, cities, and reservoirs may depend on ecosystems located hundreds or thousands of kilometers away.
• Reduced rainfall from deforestation can undermine agriculture, river flows, and hydropower, revealing forests as a form of natural water infrastructure that supports food production, energy systems, and economic stability.
• By assigning a monetary value to forest-generated rainfall, researchers estimate the service in the Amazon alone is worth on the order of tens of billions of dollars annually, underscoring that forest loss threatens not only biodiversity and carbon storage but regional climate systems themselves.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34370839

Gatti emphasised the role of international commodity demand in sustaining deforestation: “It’s hypocritical to blame Brazil alone for failing to combat deforestation while countries such as the United States, those in Europe, China, the UK, and others continue to buy products linked to deforestation.

"If they stopped buying timber, meat, soy, corn and minerals produced in deforested areas, deforestation could end very quickly.”

“This river is our road. It is our source of food, the home of our fish, and essential to the balance of the forest and the climate. How can this richness be turned into a corridor for soy? And worse, without listening to the peoples who live in and from it? That is why we are here — because we want Brazil to respect ILO Convention 169 and consult us before decisions are made. This decree was signed first, and now they want to discuss how to consult us? That is not consultation; it is an attempt to legitimize what has already been decided. And decided by whom? For whom? To benefit a handful of foreign companies, like Cargill, that profit from human rights and environmental violations in the Amazon,” said Auricélia Arapiuns, a leader from the Lower Tapajós region.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34316845

The future of the American west hangs in balance this week, as seven states remained at a stalemate over who should bear the brunt of the enormous water cuts needed to pull the imperiled Colorado River back from the brink. Time is running short to reach a deal before a critical deadline, set for Saturday.

In the region where water has long been the source of survival and conflict, the challenges hindering consensus are as steep as the stakes are high.

Snaking across 1,450 miles (2,300km) from the Rocky Mountains into Mexico, the Colorado supplies roughly 40 million people in seven states, 5.5m acres (2.23m hectares) of farmland and dozens of tribes. The waters fuel an estimated $1.4tn in economic activity, and raised bustling cities, including Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas. The sprawling basin is also home to diverse ecosystems, with scores of birds, fish, plants and animals, and provides critical habitat for more than 150 threatened or endangered species.

The river has also been overdrawn for more than a century. As demand continues to grow, rising temperatures and lower precipitation caused by the climate crisis are taking an increasingly larger share of declining supplies, a trend only expected to worsen as the world warms.

This is actually her last (first) walk. Now she's doing a hike/kayaking adventure.

This main break destroyed an entire road and left about 2 dozen houses without water for 2 days. My destroyed I mean, it literally looked like an earth quake happened.

It's absolutely critical that we pay attention to and maintain our infrastructure. We spend a lot of time labor, and money repairing things that should be replaced and/or upgraded. That being said, this is a cast iron main from the 1920s and that was the first break in this section. That's pretty damn good.

I think we could do better planning our infrastructure especially water and sewer to extend the life and avoid a lot of loss.

Fun fact, water systems have to be monitored and leaks have to be found or you'll lose a lot and I mean a lot of water. This tiny crack was causing about a 20% water loss for this town. I can't remember off hand how many gallons a minute that was but I THINK it averaged out to around 600 gallons an hour.

We can do water conservation on an individual level but if we're not monitoring our systems, we're doing ourselves an insane disservice. We're wasting time, resources, chemicals and energy treating and testing water that's just being dumped.

This valve was replaced and their water loss went back down to 1.5% the following month. (That's really great and the lowest of all the towns I've worked with).

There's a fun water system info dump for you ;)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34028426

Brazil has suspended a decree on dredging and privatizing the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the Amazon, after protests shut down a grain terminal — but Indigenous groups are pressing for its full revocation.

Hundreds of Indigenous protesters have since Jan. 22 blockaded the Cargill grain facility in the Amazonian city of Santarém over the threats they say the decree poses to the 14 Indigenous territories and hundreds of riverine communities living along the Tapajós.

The decree was a part of an infrastructure project called the Tapajós waterway, which plans to allow private sector actors to expand sections of the Tapajós, Madeira and Tocantins rivers. The project would make the rivers navigable year-round for large barges carrying soy, corn and other grains from Brazil’s agricultural states in the Cerrado and the Amazon to ports on the Atlantic coast.

After almost three weeks of protests, the federal government suspended the decree on Feb. 6, but protesters continue to demand that the decree be revoked entirely.