The ruling backs Minnesota’s pollution standard, which limits the amount of sulfates that can be discharged into lakes and rivers to 10 milligrams per liter, the Star Tribune reported. The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, the plaintiff in the case, had argued that the rule was applied unfairly to copper mining projects, many of which would share the same watersheds as wild rice. The Chamber also called into question the scientific validity of the pollution rule, prompting the state legislature to order a study reviewing how sulfates impact the rice. Depending on the results of that study, the standard may change, but for now the court’s decision is a victory for conservationists.

An interactive infographic created by Circle of Blue design interns Kelly Shea and Mark Townsend

Last summer, I had the opportunity to meet with biologists and tribal members at the Bad River Reservation in northern Wisconsin, who explained that wild rice is both ecologically and spiritually important. The Bad River rice beds also face the threat of mining pollution. To learn more about wild rice, check out the interactive infographic above, created by Circle of Blue design interns Kelly Shea and Mark Townsend. You can also read my story here.

Have any other stories about water pollution and its effect on ecosystems? Comment below or send me an e-mail at codi@circleofblue.org

Food and water are also growing scarce in Timbuktu in northern Mali, ever since rebels took control of the area amid political chaos caused after a military coup in March, according to Reuters.

Pressed with a worsening water crisis, Zimbabwe will start requiring all borehole owners — including companies, drillers and water bottling companies — to register their boreholes with the government, Voice of America reported. The lack of constant supply and safe drinking water is the main reason behind recurring epidemics of water borne diseases like typhoid and cholera in the country.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration is considering Pakistan’s charges that an Indian hydroelectric project on the Kishanganga River violates Pakistan’s water rights, the South Asian News Agency reported.

The promise of big copper, coal and gold riches is driving an unprecedented mining boom in Mongolia, according to NPR. Its economy grew at more than 17 percent in 2011, which is nearly twice as fast as China’s.

The Stream is a daily digest spotting global water trends. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

Hans VanSumeren, director of the Water Studies Institute at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, narrates the process of mapping the Grand Traverse Bay with sonar technology.

TRANSCRIPTION

Hans VanSumeren: My name is Hans VanSumeren and I’m the director of the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute at Northwestern Michigan College.

The idea of conducting hydrographic surveys in the bay was something that had not happened in a long long time. This year we’re using Kongsberg’s 3002 multi-beam sonar. It sends out hundreds of beams to the bottom of the lake and each beam is capable of resolving somewhere around 1-2 inches of definition at the bottom. So those 500 beams are spread out over up to 200 degrees of swath, so the deeper you go, the farther that swatch coverage goes. In deeper water we’re actually mapping 600-800 meters across at any one time. As we move through the water and the vessel rolls or pitches or heaves, all that information is fed back into the system so that the information we get from the bottom is all maintained at a real high level of accuracy. This equipment is used all over the world. It creates essentially a motion picture of the bottom, so we’re getting resolution of sand ripples, or bottom features, or drop-offs, or sediment types, or things on the bottom that we simply don’t know about right now.

Through Michigan Sea Grant, through the state DEQ (Department of Environmental Quality) and through the college, we’ve pooled these resources to get this boat operational, to get this equipment up and running, to get students to run the program. So we have 3 student interns onboard today from our Freshwater Studies degree program.

Brent Goggins: My name is Brent Goggins and I’m a part of the freshwater studies program. The most interesting thing for me as far as the most change that has happened is, you know, these quagga mussels and zebra mussels, how much they’ve clarified the water, how much they’ve filtered the plankton out. Clarity went from whatever it was, now we’re down 15 meters and you can see this. It’s ridiculous how clear it is and everybody’s says ‘Oh it’s so beautiful and clear’ but it’s clear for a reason. There’s nothing there.

VanSumeren: We know the quagga mussels are pretty much at all depths of the lakes now. And we’ve seen them in 200, 300, 400 feet of water. But if we start to look at sediment characteristics and then look to see what sediment do they really prefer or not prefer, then we’ll be able to characterize the bay as a whole, and say ok, in these general areas we’re seeing an abundance of quagga mussels or round goby, and in these areas we’re seeing nothing.

Kyle Lalone: Hi, I’m Kyle LaLone from Elk Rapids. I’m in the freshwater studies program. This is an exciting opportunity as far as people can learn and explore what the water can offer and what we can give back to it.

VanSumeren: Last year we found a shipwreck. We had, not this system, but something similar, and we found a shipwreck off of Lee Point that had gone down in 1980 and people had been looking for it for many, many years and had not been able to find it. In terms of this year, we’ll just keep looking for sediment changes in the bottom, unique features at the bottom. After this is all done and the sonar work is done, we’re going to get a remote-operated vehicle and we’re going to drop that submarine down and visually inspect these areas. So anything we find that we don’t know what it is, we’ll put a camera on it and we’ll find out exactly what it is.

Mark Breederland: This is Mark Breederland with Michigan Sea Grant. I’m an extension educator based in Traverse City, Michigan. We’ve pretty much been in the west side of Grand Traverse Bay, but either today or this week we’ll be in the east side of Grand Traverse Bay, which has some very steep topography right off the Old Mission Peninsula. The deepest spot that we know of is about 620 feet in East Grand Traverse Bay off of the Old Mission Harbor. A dream would be actually just getting up to the Straits of Mackinac. It’s such a fascinating spot, where Lake Michigan and Huron naturally come together as a river. I think we’ll see more and more of this type of survey work being done through time.

Heather Rousseau is a photojournalist and former intern for Circle of Blue during the summer of 2010. Read more about Hans VanSumeren and the Water Studies Institute in this article by Circle of Blue’s assistant editor Aubrey Ann Parker: At the Helm of the First U.S. Freshwater Studies Program — Meet Hans VanSumeren. Reach Parker at aubrey@circleofblue.org.

Meanwhile, a desalination plant in Adelaide is driving up the water prices in South Australia, according to The Australian. Water fees in the state will increase 25 percent next year.

A new project to fetch water by trucks through prime paddy land to Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, threatens to raise tensions between water companies and rice growers, Inter Press Service reported.

Thousands of households near Tokyo had their water supply cut off on Saturday after local checks found it was contaminated with a cancer-causing chemical, AFP reported.

Global freshwater demand is driving up sea levels even faster than melting glaciers, the Guardian reported, citing new research published in Nature Geoscience.

The Stream is a daily digest spotting global water trends. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

Someone has been poisoning the well—literally. In Afghanistan last week, nearly 400 boys were sickened after drinking their school’s water, 80 were hospitalized, and foul play is suspected, CNN reported. It’s not the first time. In April, BBC reported that more than 100 girls were hospitalized after drinking poisoned water at a school in Afghanistan’s northern region.

While the possibility of attackers using open water sources as a weapon poses a significant security risk, diminishing water supplies are expected to create security threats on a global scale. My colleague, Brett Walton, wrote an in-depth analysis of a report released this spring by the U.S. State Department, which predicts that water scarcity could drive global conflict.

Click on the above image to go to an interactive world map created by the Pacific Institute that shows water conflicts.

It already has in some places, like Brazil, where an average of 1 person each day is dying due to water conflicts amid the country’s worst drought in 50 years, AFP reported. Other instances of water violence that Circle of Blue has reported include:

•Libya, 2011: Qaddafi loyalists turned off water supplies to half the country.

•Ethiopia and Kenya, 2011: Fighting along the border was spurred by droughts.

•Uganda, 2009: Domestic violence increased due to water shortages.

•China and Tibet, 2008: Protesters and police clash over resource policy.

If you know of any other water conflicts happening, comment below or let me know via e-mail at codi@circleofblue.org so that we can continue to track this important issue.

Glen Canyon
The Bureau of Reclamation announced the schedule for the environmental impact statement that will accompany a change in the long-term management plan for Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. The bureau hopes to have a draft EIS ready by next February or March.

Mining and Salmon
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has published a draft scientific assessment of the effects of large-scale mining on Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed. A large copper and gold mine is proposed for the bay’s headwaters, and the EPA is mulling whether to claim regulatory authority via the Clean Water Act. Alaska’s attorney general accused the agency of “overreach,” according to the Associated Press.

USGS Water
The U.S. Geological Survey published a report on how different carbon emissions scenarios will affect river runoff in 14 U.S. river basins. The study found that each basin will see different effects.

Water Quality
The Natural Resources Conservation Service announced a National Water Quality Initiative to prevent nutrient pollution. Farmers and ranchers in 157 watersheds are eligible to apply for grants.

Federal Water Tap is a weekly digest spotting trends in U.S. government water policy. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

India could see its first commercial shale gas production in four years, Bloomberg News reported. Companies are waiting for further data analysis and government policy before any serious drilling begins.

China’s government has announced it will spend $US 79 billion on nearly 6,000 projects to prevent and control water pollution, Xinhua reported.

Climate Change
The United States Geological Survey has studied how climate change will affect water availability in 14 basins across the U.S., United Press International reported. The findings: a warming trend will likely reduce snowpack, meaning less water flowing into river basins.

After mapping Australasia’s temperature trends for the past 1,000 years, scientists at Australia’s University of Melbourne found that the last 60 years have been the hottest, the Guardian reported. The study’s authors say it supports the idea of man-made climate change.

Climate change, particularly droughts and floods, cost Kenya $US 11.5 billion in 2011, Xinhua reported, citing Kenya’s prime minister. A study estimates that it will take $US 1 billion for drought recovery efforts in the country.

The United Nations climate chief urged countries to set emission reduction targets now in order to prepare for a global climate deal in 2015, AlertNet reported.

The Stream is a daily digest spotting global water trends. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how groundwater withdrawals have rescued farmers in southern New Mexico from scant surface water from the Rio Grande. Thanks to consecutive subpar snow seasons in the Rockies, the eponymous reservoir that serves Elephant Butte Irrigation District is more than 80 percent empty.

Farmers responded in 2011 by pumping a record amount of groundwater. They are likely to do so again this year. And that has caught the attention of municipal officials in nearby Las Cruces, which uses the same aquifers to supply its population of nearly 100,000.

Asked by the Las Cruces Sun-News if he was concerned about the increase in groundwater use, city councilman Greg Smith said, “Absolutely.” He went on to say that there could be more cooperation between large-scale irrigators, small-scale farmers, and the city.

Not Just New Mexico
The Texas Tribune reports that 50 miles downstream, near El Paso, the Rio Grande has run dry for the first time in a decade. The largest city in western Texas (pop. 650,000) will pump more groundwater and fire up the world’s largest inland desalination plant to cover the shortfall. In many places, aquifers have long been the easy emergency water source: drill a well and pump. But groundwater tables, including in the Texas Panhandle, are falling. Combine the ease of access with declining surface runoff, climate change, and growing demand, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Few States Rewriting Groundwater Management
This legislative session, for example, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed five water conservation bills, several of which provide longer planning horizons for groundwater use. But in Texas, the state Supreme Court ruled this winter in favor of landowners’ rights when it comes to groundwater pumping. The implications of the ruling, especially for conservation and groundwater regulation, are still to be determined.

Have a groundwater story to share? Email me at brett@circleofblue.org or post a comment.

–Brett Walton
Circle of Blue reporter

Photo © Aaron Jaffe / Circle of Blue

Since transitioning into a new global hydrocarbon center, the Hunter Valley region — which also boasts some of Australia’s best wine valleys — has become a competitive battlefield for laborers. John Cruickshank says he struggles to find workers to nurse his vines into wine, since he cannot compete with the lucrative high salaries paid by the mining industry.

By Aaron Jaffe
Circle of Blue

MUSWELLBROOK, Australia — The town of Muswellbrook, here in the fertile Hunter Valley in northeastern New South Wales, has always been a little rough around the edges. The overhangs of the two-block-long main street shade entrances to taverns and outfitters where sturdy boots and deep-brimmed hats line dusty shelves. Bars alternate between sports and karaoke on weeknights; locals down cold brews from taps that are generations old.

Click to see our Interactive Map of where we went in Australia.

But a torrent of new investments in mineral leases, coal mines, and excavating equipment is changing the look of the local economy and giving Muswellbrooke the most significant development boost it has ever seen. Over the past 10 years, soaring global demand for coal has transformed the Hunter Valley farming region — which also boasts Australia’s premier equine industry and some of its best wine valleys — into a global hydrocarbon center that hosts 24 open-cut coal mines and the world’s most complex coal supply chain operation.

Mines here dig up more than 120 million metric tons of coal a year, most of which is shipped to the power stations and steel furnaces of Asia. With coal prices expected to remain above $US 100 a metric ton, expansion of the 24 existing mines and the start-up construction on new mines is expected to double the production coming out of the Hunter Valley over the next 18 months.

The Hunter Valley also is the focal point for an industry that has been a financial boon to the New South Wales state government and the Australian national government — mineral royalties account for nearly 10 percent of Australia’s GDP and half of its exports. But the massive mining development is putting tremendous pressures on Australian communities like Muswellbrook.

What is going on in the Hunter Valley is emblematic of the struggle in other regions of Australia and across the world as an unprecedented global expansion of hydrocarbon production, often in prime agricultural areas, is setting agriculture and energy users into a fierce competition over the land and water they both depend on.

Coal Mining Reaches New Level of Intensity
Though Muswellbrook hosted one small coal mine for over a century, large-scale mining did not start here until 2002, with the construction of the Bengalla coal mine. The presence of a single big mine, or even a few, gave the town a nice economic boost. But the genesis of the region over the last decade into a mining center has had disastrous economic effects on this town of 10,000 residents.

Photo © Aaron Jaffe / Circle of Blue

The promise of big coal reserves in the Hunter Valley has spurred a torrent of new investments in mineral leases, coal mines, and excavating equipment. Over-sized loads put stress on the region’s roads, as does the nearly endless stream of cars carrying miners and contractors willing to make the pre-dawn drive or stay in hotels during the week.

Energy companies have clashed with farmers in the Hunter Valley over where the mines will be built. Since mineral rights belong to the state — farmers only own the topsoil — plans for a new mine can either translate to a payout or a need to relocate the business. The expanding sprawl of coal mines throughout the valley has edged out many farmers and undercut the property values of others who want to move out of the region but are unable to sell their land adjacent to massive coal mines.

Farmers Fight Coal Mining on the Neighboring Liverpool Plains

Photo © Aaron Jaffe / Circle of Blue

Sitting on his porch, Caroona Coal Action Group spokesperson Tim Duddy says he spends hours every day giving interviews to the media about the dangers of mining and gas drilling on the Liverpool Plains, which borders the Hunter Valley.

As mining companies rapidly expand their operations throughout the Hunter Valley, some are looking north to the adjacent Liverpool Plains to quench the industry’s hunger for new hydrocarbons.

Rich in coal and coal seam gas, the Liverpool Plains is home to some of the most fertile soil in Australia. Farmers there are fighting to ensure that their lush landscape does not turn into the coal-mine-covered Hunter Valley, or become home to a network of coal seam gas wells.

“It is wartime. There is no question agriculture is fighting for its life,” said farmer Tim Duddy, spokesman for the Caroona Coal Action Group, a community organization working tirelessly to question, slow, and stop coal development from proceeding on the Liverpool Plains.

The mining industry is more optimistic that mining and agriculture can peacefully co-exist, argueing that good fences make good neighbors and that it should be up to the government to create a coherent set of regulations that both sides can abide by.

“The previous Government’s failure to show any leadership on strategic land use planning has hurt the State’s regions and, in some cases, actually increased tensions between industries,” said Sue-En Tan, deputy CEO of the New South Wales Minerals Council. “The Government needs to make some hard decisions, based on a rigorous determination of the land values the State needs to protect.”

Can the two industries coexist?

“If they can, I’ve never seen it,“ Duddy told Circle of Blue. “When a mining industry comes to town, and it doesn’t matter what town it is, four businesses go berserk: the local accommodation, the local hotels, the brothels, and one or two big machinery industries — every other business in town completely dies.”

“The strip coal mining that you see in the Hunter Valley is just ecologically disastrous, because you are digging up the entire landscape, completely changing the hydrology,“ Dr. James Pittock, researcher at the Australian National University in Canberra, the nation’s capital, told Circle of Blue.

Open-cut coal mining requires stripping away the landscape until miners can blast away at coal deposits, creating a pit that sinks hundreds of meters into the earth. This kind of excavation irreversibly transforms the landscape with the mine and its tailings.

Strip mining has additional impacts below the surface. Keeping the mine dry requires draining any hydrology that runs through the excavation. This can drain aquifers in the surrounding area, sucking dry the water that nearby farmers rely on for irrigation.

Mining can also make water more expensive for agricultural users when they need it most.

Australia distributes its water allocations through a market. If a user has a surplus, that individual can sell it; if a user needs more, more can be bought.

Mining accounts for only 1.5 percent of the total water use in New South Wales, while agriculture uses 44 percent, according to the state’s Minerals Council. Despite its small slice of the pie, agricultural users argue that the increase in mining drives up the price of water to untenable prices during dry times.

Labor Pool Dries Up
Examining his oak barrels in his vineyard, John Cruickshank remembers when he started growing grapes in the 1970s and the Hunter Valley had only one coal mine and 25 wineries. On the highway running south from Muswellbrook, sun-bleached signs still advertise the valley as Australia’s wine country.

Like many others, Cruickshank has a hard time finding the labor force he needs to nurse his vines into wine. “It’s very hard to find workers and very hard to find subontractors,” Cruickshank told Circle of Blue.

As coal mines have blossomed from one to 24 over the last decade, the number of winemakers has dwindled from 25 to three. This kind of attrition is shared by other types of agriculture across the region.

Mining jobs with lucrative high salaries have dried up the pool of workers available for farmers, causing a labor shortage for the agriculture industry that has, at times, meant fields go unharvested. For instance, unskilled laborers earn a starting annual salary of over $US 100,000 working 12-hour shifts as truck drivers in the coal mines. Farmers that hire for truck drivers or farmhands pay much more modest wages and cannot compete with the salaries offered by the mines.

Photo © 2012 by Aaron Jaffe / Circle of Blue

The rush of temporary workers in Muswellbrook’s booming mining industry keeps motels busy and accommodation prices high, with some booked months into the future.

Remembering the days when the region was rich with vitoculture, Cruickshank said the mining industry has taken “a divide and conquer approach… They are so wealthy that they upset the balance completely.”

Two-speed Economy
Muswellbrook is a two-speed economy, and local tax revenues have remained in low gear. Though coal mining extracts billions of dollars of resources, little of it — less than 1 percent — trickles back to Muswellbrook’s shire coffers.

In other words, those employed by the mines prosper, while the town and those outside of the mining economy are unable to keep up with rising prices. Despite the coal boom, in real terms, Muswellbrook has gotten poorer, according to Muswellbrook’s mayor, Martin Rush.

Coal mining in the Hunter Valley brings billions of dollars out of the ground annually, generating $US 700 million in mining royalties for New South Wales, which accounts for 60 percent of the state’s total mining royalties. However, despite being an economic boon for the state, Muswellbrook’s local government received below-average funding from the state for infrastructure and capital works projects.

Coal Mining Reaches New Level of Intensity
Though Muswellbrook hosted one small coal mine for over a century, large-scale mining did not start here until 2002, with the construction of the Bengalla coal mine. The presence of a single big mine, or even a few, gave the town a nice economic boost. But the genesis of the region over the last decade into a mining center has had disastrous economic effects on this town of 10,000 residents.

Graphic © Amanda Northrop and Alec Aja / Circle of Blue

Infographic showing how a decade of coal industry expansion has impacted the economics of Australia’s Hunter Valley. Click to enlarge image.

And while the town receives little funding for public works, Muswellbrook scrambles to keep up with the stress exerted on the region’s roads by heavy mining equipment and the nearly endless stream of cars carrying miners and contractors. Mining has led to a huge influx of workers willing to make the pre-dawn drive, or stay in hotels during the week.

The rush of workers is prompting a huge housing crunch. Home prices have skyrocketed, doubling within one year. Motel rooms that normally go for $US 30 to $US 50 a night have crept to $US 150 to $US 200, with some accommodations booked months into the future.

“All of those markets have become overcooked,” Mayor Rush told Circle of Blue.

Fighting the Inevitable

Photo © Aaron Jaffe / Circle of Blue

“No Mines” signs hang from fences throughout the Liverpool Plains in New South Wales, which is fighting to stop an energy development boom that is already in full throttle in the neighboring Hunter Valley.

In the dozens of proposals submitted to build mines in the Hunter Valley, only one has ever been defeated.

The national government intervened to designate the proposed area an exclusion zone of environmental importance. At the end of the day, the case was won by the argument that the mine would contaminate water resources.

Farmers on the Liverpool Plains, to the north of the Hunter Valley, are fighting for a similar exemption to put a moratorium on mining in the region on the basis that its farmland is too productive to allow it to be disturbed by the new industry.

But it is hard for residents of the Liverpool Plains not to see mining as inevitable — the coal below the soil is lucrative enough to buy out nearly any farmer. For instnace, the most recently proposed mine for the Liverpool Plains bought property from landholders at up to six times its market value. If built, Shenhua Watermark’s coal project will extract $US 240 billion of coal.

Yet, while both the mineral companies and those who sell to them reap the economic benefits, farmers surrounding a coal mine can shoulder many uncompensated costs.

Juanita Hamparsum’s property is located close to the proposed Shenhua Watermark development. Hamparsum — who grows a range of crops, including cotton — worries that particles of coal dust from the mine will make her most profitable crops unsellable. Dust and eyesore aside, Hamparsum’s chief worry, however, is the mine’s impact on her water supply.

Water is invaluable; it’s priceless. You lose it, it’s gone,” Hamparsum told Circle of Blue. Like many other farmers on the Liverpool Plains, she irrigates to be able to grow crops year round.

In an already tightly allocated, water-scarce region, any disturbance in her water supply could make farming untenable.

But until digging commences, or the mine is blocked, Hamparsum will not definitely know what the impacts on her water supply and crops will be. Though Australian law requires that the mine compensate her if it impacts her water supply, the burden of proof will be on her.

On the other side of the coin, the mining industry focuses on the new investment and job creation in the region. The industry projects that, over the next decade in the Hunter Valley, $US 14 billion will be invested and 25,000 new jobs will be created.

Representatives of the mining industry focus on calming the concerns of communities and weighing the benefits mining brings.

“It must be so tempting, when in government, to respond quickly to concerns in the community and sticky political situations,” Sue-Ern Tan said in a 2011 speech. Tan is deputy CEO of the New South Wales Minerals Council, the peak organization that represents the mining industry in the region. “But when we are talking about investments in the billions of dollars, jobs in the thousands of people, and the future of the industry that is responsible for 17 percent of private investment in the state, caution and cool heads are required.”

When asked what will happen if the mining boom slows down, or the area runs out of coal, Mayor Rush said he is confident that mining will continue to accelerate into the foreseeable future.

In mapping the future of the region, Muswellbrook’s mayor posited that it is all about developing in moderation to ensure that the town is not unsustainable when mining slows down. He admitted that a transition away from coal will be painful, and the outcome of whether Muswellbrook will return to its roots as a farming community — or become a ghost town — is ambiguous.

Others say they already see the writing on the wall. At run-down motels, owners revel at the windfall-profits they get from the mining boom. They know it will end, but don’t care.

From a run-down supply room with cigarette smoke enveloping his dimly lit sihouette, one motel owner told Circle of Blue that he is happy to see the mines expand. As soon as business slows, if it ever does, he will have the money to move out, away from the open-cut pits and tailing piles.

Burgeoning Coal Mines Look to Expand North
For the time being, the Hunter Valley’s large-scale coal mining is an accepted reality. Residents, miners, and the local government all see its expansion as inevitable; the coal below the region’s topsoil is too lucrative to pass up. However, as energy companies tear through the coal deposits here, they are also focusing their future mining ambitions northward, to the adjacent Liverpool Plains.

But residents here in Muswellbrook, residents give knowing looks about what is in store for ther neighbors.

Perched on a stool in a tavern at the corner of downtown’s main steet, Damen Marrick, a life-long Muswellbrook resident, pauses over a pint of Tooheys. Marrick has worked a string of jobs in and around the mines, from truck driver to mechanic. He says that he would not wish what has happened to Muswellbrook on any other part of the country.

“There are no jobs other than the mines,” Marrick told Circle of Blue. “It’s creating jobs, but the locals aren’t getting the jobs.”

Photo © Aaron Jaffe / Circle of Blue

Perched on a stool in a tavern at the corner of Muswellbrook’s main street, life-long resident Damen Marrick — who has worked a string of mining jobs, from truck driver to mechanic — says that the town would go bust as soon as the mining slows down.

Peering up from under the brim of an orange trucker hat, Marrick says he would never raise a family in Muswellbrook. He believes the town will be dead soon, as soon as the mining slows down. Even as others salivate over the wealth coming out of the ground, Marrick sees little hope for Muswellbrook — to him, it is already a wasteland.

“All you can do is eat, drink and piss here,” Marrick said, before returning to his beer.

This is the third story in a three-part series about Australia’s coal and coal seam gas boom. Read the first story on the global demands that are driving Australia’s coal and gas export boom and the second story on agricultural clashes with the coal seam gas industry on the Liverpool Plains.

Aaron Jaffe is a Chicago-based multimedia producer for Circle of Blue. Amanda Northrop and Alec Aja are undergraduate students at Grand Valley State University and Traverse City-based design interns for Circle of Blue. Reach them at aaron@circleofblue.org, amanda@circleofblue.org, and alec.aja@circleofblue.org.

Finland’s environmental regulators will toughen rules for mining companies amid growing evidence about environmental damage from the country’s recent mining boom, Bloomberg reported. The promise of big mining profits is driving fresh public concerns about toxic waste water discharges.

Environmental journalist Fred Pearce shares his 10 favorite eco-books — from stories of ecological collapse to the hope of nuclear technology.

The world needs to “radically transform” the way it manages water, energy and land, according to the European Report on Development, the Guardian reported. The study calls on the European Union to adopt an integrated approach to managing this nexus.

The Department of Water and Power of the City of Los Angeles plans to sell $276.8 million of water system revenue bonds next week, Reuters reported.

Don’t forget it’s Africa Water Week.

The Stream is a daily digest spotting global water trends. To get more water news, follow Circle of Blue on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter.