Global Rundown
- Ethiopia announced the completion of a new hydropower dam on the Nile River, a project Egypt has called an “existential threat” to its own water supply.
- Extreme heat in France and Switzerland has forced the temporary closure of at least three nuclear reactors.
- For the first time in over a century, Paris’s Seine River is open for public swimming.
- Central Texas’s Guadalupe River swelled more than 20 feet in less than an hour during weekend downpours, killing at least 80 people in subsequent flash floods.
The Lead
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced last Thursday that construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the country’s newest power-generating dam, has officially been completed.
Built on the Nile River, the project has been controversial since it broke ground in 2011. Leaders in Egypt, located downstream, have called the dam an “existential threat” to their water supply, as the country’s 100 million residents depend nearly entirely on the north-flowing Nile for irrigation.
Despite 13 years of water-sharing negotiations, Ethiopia and Egypt have failed to reach an agreement. As a result, with the project now complete, Egyptians worry their access to water — heavily influenced now by Ethiopia’s use of the dam — will run short in the event of a drought. “At one point, tensions ran so high that some feared the dispute would escalate to war,” the Associated Press reports.
Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue
- In Juneau, a new website offers anxious residents a better way to prepare for annual floods — The interactive Juneau Flood Dashboard shares maps, alerts, and water level forecasts for valley homes under different flood scenarios.
- The Season of Our Growing Discontent — Summer is when natural hazards are most pronounced.
This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers
82 Fahrenheit
Water temperature in southern France’s Garonne River as extreme heat rolls through Europe, the New York Times reports. Last week, in an effort to protect nearby riparian ecosystems, at least three nuclear reactors in Switzerland and France were temporarily shut down. During normal conditions, river water cools down these reactors, then it is pumped back into the river at warmer temperatures. But as high temperatures persisted, officials ceded to environmental regulations restricting the “excessive heating” of already-warm water, which is a danger to flora and fauna.
The effects of climate change are closely tied to France’s power production. As global temperatures continue to rise, “the country may see the amount of electricity lost because of climate-related shutdowns triple or quadruple by 2050.”
In context: The Season of Our Growing Discontent
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Years since Parisians last swam in the Seine River, which over recent decades has earned a reputation for its unsafe water filled with E. coli, trash, and chemical pollution. Cleanup efforts began in earnest ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, when officials invested roughly $1.6 billion to improve the Seine’s water quality. As evidence of its rehabilitation, certain swimming and triathlon events took place in the river last summer, and this weekend three swimming zones were officially opened to the public, France 24 reports.
On the Radar
Rescue and recovery efforts continue throughout central Texas, where a weekend of heavy rains and subsequent flash flooding killed at least 82 people, including 27 young girls and counselors at a summer camp. The camp sat near the Guadalupe River, which swelled 26 feet in roughly 45 minutes amidst the sudden deluge early on July 4, NPR reports.
Images of the damage circulating online show houses, cars, roads, and forested areas swept away by the rushing floodwaters. At least 850 people had been rescued as of Monday morning in sprawling search-and-rescue operations. Showers continued to fall throughout the region through Monday, adding to the devastation. Already, this has been characterized as one of the deadliest flooding events in American history, a mixture of bad risk management and extreme inundation.
“The tragic events in Texas are exactly what we would expect in our hotter, climate-changed, world,” Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, told CNN. “Such events will only become more commonplace as the global temperature continues to climb.”
Fresh: From the Great Lakes Region
Silos’ Last Stand? Last Thursday, the city of Chicago issued demolition permits for two century-old grain elevators that have stood empty for years on the city’s Southwest Side, near the Chicago River. The demolition would clear room for MAT Limited Partnership, a company that operates a nearby asphalt plant and owns the 23-acre site on which the silos stand. Representatives of the plant have spoken in the past about potentially building corporate headquarters in their stead, though no plans have been finalized, Inside Climate News reports.
The community’s residents have pushed back on the company’s plans, and continue to advocate for the silos’ preservation and the reimagining of the space into a city park. The MAT asphalt plant has recently been cited for environmental violations, “and in 2023 agreed to pay $1.2 million to settle a class-action lawsuit from neighbors who said dust, smoke, and odors from the plant harmed their ability to go about their lives.”
Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now at Detroit Public Television, Michigan Public and The Narwhal work together to report on the most pressing threats to the Great Lakes region’s water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work here.
- Daily contact, a Ford phone call: docs reveal Ontario government’s close relationship with Enbridge — The Narwhal
- Where the strawberries still grow — Great Lakes Now
- Life goes on, even at uninhabited Lake Huron island, sometimes surprisingly — Bridge Michigan
- Stateside Podcast: Could whitefish disappear from Lake Michigan and Lake Huron? — Michigan Public