Water/Drought Archives - Inside Climate News

New Mexico Looks to Address Increasing Aridity With Brackish and Produced Water. Experts Are ‘Skeptical’

By Wyatt Myskow — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 10:30:00 +0000

The Southwestern state announced Tuesday that it would spend $500 million on salty water from deep underground and wastewater from oil and gas production as a solution to its shortage.

By Wyatt Myskow

New Mexico will invest $500 million into purchasing water from controversial sources, including treated oilfield wastewater, as a means to bolster the state’s water portfolio. The purchases are the latest in a long-running series of deals dipping into untapped waters to shore up dwindling supplies as climate change and decades of overconsumption drive aridification of the Southwest.

In California, Farmers Test a Method to Sink More Water into Underground Stores

By Emma Foehringer Merchant — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000

A novel program reimburses landowners for replenishing groundwater, in a bid to add regularity to the state’s boom and bust water system.

By Emma Foehringer Merchant

In recent decades, as water has grown increasingly precious, Californians have tried countless ways to find more of it and make it last longer, including covering agricultural canals with solar panels to prevent evaporation, building costly desalination plants and pulling out tracts of water-hungry grass.

Pumped Storage Hydro Could be Key to the Clean Energy Transition. But Where Will the Water Come From?

By Wyatt Myskow — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 10:30:00 +0000

Dozens of proposed projects would pump water uphill to reservoirs that release it to generate electricity when wind and solar can’t. But their reliance on groundwater in the drought-stricken Southwest is leading to pushback.

By Wyatt Myskow

ELY, Nevada—The smell of piñon pine filled the air as the Ghost Train of Old Ely rolled to a stop between the Duck Creek Range and another railway. Two peaks of jagged limestone towered above the sagebrush and juniper trees that filled the range, providing habitat for elk, deer, pronghorn, rattlesnakes and sage grouse. Sundown here in the Great Basin Desert reveals some of the darkest skies in the country.

Feds Bet on Paying for Water Conservation to Protect the Colorado River

By Wyatt Myskow — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 10:30:00 +0000

Arizona and other states have agreed to use considerably less water from the river through 2026, thanks in part to a wet winter.

By Wyatt Myskow

PHOENIX—Arizona’s future was at a critical juncture at the beginning of 2023.

Fish and Wildlife Service Proposes Sprawling Conservation Area in Everglades Watershed

By Amy Green — Sun, 22 Oct 2023 09:30:00 +0000

Explosive growth continues to pressure Florida’s natural resources, and climate change will drive more development inland. The hope is to push back against the impact.

By Amy Green

ORLANDO, Fla.—A new federal proposal calls for creating a conservation area that would span 12 counties in Florida, from the Everglades’ headwaters in the center of the state to sawgrass prairies further south, preserving a region that is home to imperiled species like the Florida panther, the official state animal.

Answers About Old Gas Sites Repurposed as Injection Wells for Fracking’s Toxic Wastewater May Never Be Fully Unearthed

By Jake Bolster — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 09:33:00 +0000

Residents in Plum Borough, Pennsylvania, are fighting to stop a proposed injection well recently approved by the EPA, citing possible water contamination. One Geologist called the proposal “state of the art,” but said questions remain.

By Jake Bolster

A little over a month after Penneco Environmental Solutions received approval in May 2021 from the Environmental Protection Agency to dispose of an additional 2.16 million gallons of highly toxic fracking wastewater in its disposal well in Plum Borough, Pennsylvania, a pressure valve tripped and shut down the well.

Scientists Disagree About Drivers of September’s Global Temperature Spike, but It Has Most of Them Worried

By Bob Berwyn — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The month’s shocking surge is likely to make 2023 the hottest year on record and drive extreme impact around the globe. It could also be a harbinger of even higher temperatures next year.

By Bob Berwyn

September’s stunning rise of the average global temperature is all but certain to make 2023 the warmest year on record, and 2024 is likely to be even hotter, edging close to the “red line” of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above the pre-industrial level that the 2015 Paris climate agreement is striving to avoid.

Biden Creates the American Climate Corps, 90 Years After FDR Put 3 Million to Work in National Parks

Interview by Aynsley O’Neill, “Living on Earth” — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The new workers will remove wildfire fuel in forests, install EV chargers in cities, retrofit thermostats in low-income homes and, it is hoped, move on to union jobs in the clean energy economy.

Interview by Aynsley O’Neill, “Living on Earth”

First Floods, Now Fires: How Neglect and Fraud Hobbled an Alabama Town

By Lee Hedgepeth — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In the majority Black town of Prichard, deterioration of water infrastructure has led to a crisis impacting nearly every aspect of residents’ lives—and now some may be forced from their homes.

By Lee Hedgepeth

PRICHARD, Ala.—Sometimes it’s the water that plagues them. Other times, it’s the fire.

The Era of Climate Migration Is Here, Leaders of Vulnerable Nations Say

By Nicholas Kusnetz — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 15:41:48 +0000

Heads of climate-vulnerable nations gathered on the sidelines of a United Nations climate summit to call for new policies and agreements to manage the millions of people who are being forced from their homes by extreme weather.

By Nicholas Kusnetz

As world leaders gathered Wednesday at the United Nations in New York to rally for more aggressive climate action, the heads of some of the most vulnerable nations met on the sidelines to highlight the daunting challenges they face as extreme weather forces millions of people to flee their homes. The problem is here already, they said, and it will only get worse unless governments slash emissions and prepare for what will effectively be a new world map.