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drinking water
Global Water Woes the 'Canary in the Coal Mine' for Climate Calamity: WMO
"As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated. It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water," the WMO lead said.
Oct 07, 2024
The climate crisis is destabilizing the world's water cycle, depriving millions of people of the freshwater resources they need while inundating others with deadly and catastrophic floods.
That's the picture painted by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)'s third-ever State of Global Water Resources report, released on Monday, which found that 2023 was the driest year for the world's rivers in more than three decades.
"Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. "We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods, and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems, and economies."
A total of 3.6 billion people struggle to access sufficient water for at least one month per year, according to U.N. Water, and this number is projected to swell to over 5 billion by 2050. In 2023, which was also the hottest year on record, river catchment areas around the world were at their driest in 33 years. As in the two years before, more than half of all catchment areas saw abnormal conditions, with most of them seeing below-average water flow.
Especially hard-hit river systems included the Mississippi and Amazon basins, which shrank to record-low water levels, as well as riparian systems in much of Northern, Central, and South America. Argentina's GDP shrank by 3% due to drought, the WMO found. Meanwhile, the report showed how major river systems in Asia—the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Mekong river basins—were drier than usual across almost all of their reach.
Another threat to freshwater access is the melting of glaciers. In 2023, the world's glaciers lost their greatest amount of mass in 50 years at over 600 metric gigatons of water. This ice loss was primarily driven by melting in western North America and Europe's Alps. Switzerland's glaciers shrank by 10% in two years.
"It was either too dry or too wet—and neither is encouraging."
"The worldwide loss of glacier volume, equivalent to 600 gigatons of water according to the latest WMO report, is alarming," said report contributor Robert Reinecke of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. "It is the greatest loss we have witnessed in the past five decades."
Saulo added: "Melting ice and glaciers threaten long-term water security for many millions of people. And yet we are not taking the necessary urgent action."
While 2023 saw drought and ice melt, its high temperatures combined with the shift from La Niña to El Niño halfway through and the positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole also fueled extreme precipitation events.
"It was either too dry or too wet—and neither is encouraging," Reinecke said. "We have to expect both extremes more frequently as global temperatures continue to rise."
Africa saw the deadliest flooding, with Storm Daniel causing a dam collapse in Libya that killed more than 11,000 people in September 2023. Also hard hit were the Greater Horn of Africa, Congo, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Malawi.
"As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated," Saulo said. "It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture which is conducive to heavy rainfall. More rapid evaporation and drying of soils worsen drought conditions."
To respond to these shifting conditions, WMO urged more monitoring and data sharing and said that the Early Warnings for All initiative must cover water-related hazards.
"Far too little is known about the true state of the world's freshwater resources," Saulo said. "We cannot manage what we do not measure. This report seeks to contribute to improved monitoring, data-sharing, cross-border collaboration, and assessments."
In response to the report, water advocate Mina Guli also called for increased conservation efforts.
"To tackle this crisis, we must invest more resources into protecting and restoring our freshwater ecosystems. Healthy rivers, lakes, and wetlands do so much more than provide water—they are our best defense against the worsening impacts of climate change and play a crucial role in ensuring food and water security while also reversing nature loss," Guli wrote on social media.
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The EPA Must Do Its Job and Regulate Factory Farms
Under the Clean Water Act, the agency should protect our water from harmful factory farm pollution, but the agency’s regulations have been failing for decades to achieve the act’s most basic requirements.
Sep 29, 2024
By design, factory farms generate stunning amounts of waste from the thousands or even millions of animals they confine. And while the industry swears it treats that waste “responsibly,” neighboring communities know otherwise.
Under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should protect our water from harmful factory farm pollution. But the agency’s regulations have been failing for decades to achieve the act’s most basic requirements, a fact that EPA admits.
According to the agency’s own data, roughly 10,000 of the nation’s largest factory farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), are illegally discharging dangerous pollution to waterways without the required federal permit. As a result, we’re facing a pollution crisis of epic proportions, threatening our drinking water, health, and environment.
When allowed to handle their waste cheaply, with little regard for the toll on people and the environment, their profit margins soar.
So in 2017, we led dozens of allies to petition EPA to strengthen its regulations to ensure all polluting CAFOs have Clean Water Act permits that effectively protect waterways as the law requires. When it denied our petition and refused to act, we sued.
A host of industry groups representing factory farm interests intervened in the case to defend EPA’s refusal to act. This comes as no surprise, as the industry has long peddled misleading arguments and downright lies to preserve the status quo. That’s because factory farms reap huge benefits from the lack of regulation. When allowed to handle their waste cheaply, with little regard for the toll on people and the environment, their profit margins soar.
This September, I countered those arguments in person before the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, explaining why EPA must strengthen its CAFO regulations to safeguard our water and our health.
Here’s the truth behind three false claims industry is pushing:
1. The Harms of Factory Farm Manure “Management” Are Clear
In their brief, industry groups claim that “modern feeding operations are designed and engineered to produce healthy animals and minimize environmental impacts from manure.” This is patently false. The industry employs—and EPA’s lax regulations allow— the cheapest waste management practices possible, with little concern for public health or the environment.
For instance, factory farms store millions of gallons of waste in open cesspools that are designed to leak, threatening drinking water. And because hauling waste away is expensive, they dump as much as they can onto nearby fields, where it runs off into waterways.
We, the scientific community, and EPA all know that lax regulations have fueled the current factory farm pollution crisis.
This is a main reason why CAFOs’ waste is such a big threat to our water. They claim they’re using this waste to fertilize crops, but in reality, they apply far more than the land or plants can absorb. It’s also common practice to dump waste on land that has no hope of absorbing any of it, including fields frozen solid in the dead of winter.
There is a trove of scientific literature documenting all of this, and even EPA concedes that its faulty regulations are to blame. Yet, EPA claims it lacks enough information to improve its regulations. This reasoning is frankly ridiculous, especially since the agency admitted it had not even reviewed the thousands of pages of scientific and government data we gave to it when we submitted our petition, including research it conducted itself.
In their brief, industry groups aim to sow doubt on this topic, but we, the scientific community, and EPA all know that lax regulations have fueled the current factory farm pollution crisis.
2. Factory Farms Benefit from a Gaping Regulatory Loophole That EPA Can and Must Close
The industry also defended an EPA rule that has created a loophole enabling thousands of CAFOs to circumvent the law. Under the Clean Water Act, polluting facilities must get a permit that requires them to limit and monitor their pollution discharges.
However, since 2003 EPA has chosen to interpret the statute in a way that exempts a huge portion of factory farm pollution from regulation. This “agricultural stormwater” exemption has also allowed the vast majority of factory farms to evade permitting requirements altogether, even for pollution that doesn’t fall under the exemption.
So we’re not surprised that the industry is determined to preserve this loophole. In its brief, it falsely claims that federal law requires EPA to apply this exemption to CAFOs. But in fact, the congressional and regulatory records make clear that legislators never intended for the exemption to apply to CAFOs or their waste disposal practices, and EPA understood that.
Contrary to industry claims, EPA applied this exemption to factory farms by its own discretion; the law did not compel them to. Now, in the face of substantial evidence that thousands of operations are exploiting this free pass, EPA can and must narrow the exemption and place stringent regulations on polluting factory farms, as Congress intended.
3. The Status Quo Is Failing to Prevent Pollution
Finally, industry groups argue that the current regulatory regime is working. They even point to Iowa and North Carolina as shining success stories for manure management. What they fail to mention is that these states have some of the worst factory farm-polluted waters in the country, because state regulators allow these operations to pollute with impunity. In fact, these states have laws that prohibit their environmental agencies from passing factory farm water pollution regulations more stringent than EPA’s.
EPA itself admits its primary pollution control strategy, “nutrient management plans,” are inadequate. For decades, the agency has assumed these plans minimize pollution runoff from fields applied with manure. That’s what the industry would like us to believe, too. But the truth is—as EPA recently acknowledged—nutrient management plans don’t do enough to protect against pollution because that’s not even their main focus.
The reality is that the status quo is not protecting rural communities from harmful factory farm pollution.
Instead, they prioritize “maximizing crop growth” where manure is applied. To fulfill its obligations under the Clean Water Act, EPA must stop pretending that nutrient management plans are a silver bullet for factory farm pollution.
The reality is that the status quo is not protecting rural communities from harmful factory farm pollution. Weak state regulations matter even less when the national permit program—the bedrock of factory farm pollution regulation—isn’t effective. EPA can and must overhaul its factory farm regulations.
The EPA Must Hold the Industry Accountable
EPA’s foot-dragging is welcome news to the factory farm industry. Under the agency’s current regulations, factory farms can continue cutting costs through irresponsible manure handling. They can dump the costs of their waste onto their neighbors, leaving rural communities with undrinkable water, health problems, and devastated quality of life.
This needs to change. EPA must stop toeing the industry line and finally stop this pollution.
Arguing before the court in September, EPA agreed the factory farm pollution problem was severe, but it swore up and down it was taking it seriously, pointing to an ongoing study Food & Water Watch forced the agency to launch through other litigation and an advisory committee it convened after denying our petition.
However, these are simply delay tactics. The study focuses narrowly on pollution standards that only apply to permitted factory farms, even though the heart of the problem is that thousands of factory farms don’t have permits to begin with. To add insult to injury, the study group is controlled by industry representatives. It’s simply not believable that the study process will lead to stronger environmental protections.
EPA’s weak arguments underscore what we’ve known for years: to address this pollution crisis, the agency must step up and strengthen its regulations. Not only do suffering communities need EPA to do its job, but the law demands it.
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'Huge—and Long Overdue—Victory': Biden EPA Finalizes Limits on PFAS in Drinking Water
"It is the most consequential decision to regulate drinking water in 30 years," said Environmental Working Group president Ken Cook.
Apr 10, 2024
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday finalized the country's first-ever national limits on "forever chemicals" in drinking water, a move that advocates welcomed as a critical step toward protecting tens of millions of people from exposure to pervasive toxic compounds that have been linked to a range of health problems—including cancer and reproductive issues.
The EPA estimates its new standards for per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which can take thousands of years to break down, would reduce exposure for around 100 million people and prevent thousands of deaths. Utility groups are expected to challenge the finalized limits in court, claiming they would be too burdensome to implement.
The new rule would require water utilities to monitor and, if necessary, reduce the levels of two forms of PFAS—known as PFOS and PFOA—to keep them in line with or below a maximum contaminant level of 4 parts per trillion. The agency set the maximum contaminant level for PFNA, PFHxS, and other compounds known as "GenX chemicals" at 10 parts per trillion.
The EPA's limits are not as bold as those recommended by scientists and green groups, including the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which nevertheless praised the finalized standards as essential progress. EWG has endorsed a 1 part per trillion PFAS limit for drinking water.
"More than 200 million Americans could have PFAS in their tap water and for decades Americans have been exposed to toxic 'forever chemicals' with no oversight from their government," EWG president Ken Cook said Wednesday. "That's because for generations, PFAS chemicals slid off of every federal environmental law like a fried egg off a Teflon pan—until Joe Biden came along."
"Today's announcement of robust, health-protective legal limits on PFAS in tap water will finally give tens of millions of Americans the protection they should have had decades ago," Cook said. "It is the most consequential decision to regulate drinking water in 30 years."
"It has taken far too long to get to this point, but the scientific facts and truth about the health threat posed by these man-made poisons have finally prevailed over the decades of corporate cover-ups."
Recent research has shed light on how ubiquitous PFAS have become: They've been detected, often in alarmingly high amounts, in groundwater, soil, food, and common household products such as toilet paper and dental floss.
In the face of such evidence, the EPA has been accused of dragging its feet on imposing strict limits on PFAS, underestimating their levels in U.S. drinking water, and withholding key data about the compounds, which at least 11 states have moved to regulate in the absence of federal action.
Rob Bilott, an attorney who has worked for decades to uncover how DuPont and other companies exposed U.S. communities to toxic contaminants, said Wednesday that "it has taken far too long to get to this point, but the scientific facts and truth about the health threat posed by these man-made poisons have finally prevailed over the decades of corporate cover-ups and misinformation campaigns designed to mislead the public and to delay action to protect public health."
"Today we celebrate a huge—and long overdue—victory for public health in this country," said Bilott. "The EPA is finally moving forward to protect drinking water across the United States by adopting federally enforceable limits on some of the most toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulative chemicals ever found in our nation's drinking water supply."
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