Chesser prairie at Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, in 2011. Photo courtesy of Flickr/Creative Commons user Chris M Morris under a CC by 2.0 license

Global Rundown

  • The nonprofit Conservation Fund acquired nearly 8,000 acres of land near Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp, protecting the ecosystem against a proposed titanium mine. 
  • A decade after the U.S. EPA updated its toxic discharge guidelines, Alabama has passed legislation to limit chemical pollution in the state’s waterways.
  • Thousands of pounds of toxic mining waste, stored controversially beneath an aquifer in France, will be sealed in with concrete, a judge has ruled.
  • Some herders in Mali are turning to hydroponics to grow feed for their livestock, a practice that helps reduce tensions with farmers and conserves land and water.

The Lead

In eastern France, some 20 miles from the German and Swiss borders and 500 meters underground, roughly 46,000 tons of toxic waste lay dormant inside retired potash mining shafts. Above this poisonous site and much closer to the surface — just five meters underground — sits the Alsace aquifer, which feeds into the Upper Rhine aquifer and helps supply drinking water for millions of people in the three countries.

The site, called Stocamine, has been the subject of controversy and protest for decades, the Guardian reports. The 77,000 miles of tunnels in the former mine are gradually shifting and caving from heat and pressure. Researchers estimate that within the next 300 years water will flood the space and become contaminated with mercury, arsenic, and cyanide, poisoning water and land for generations. 

Environmental advocates have called the site a “timebomb” and continue to call for the toxic substances to be removed. But last week, a judge upheld a government decision to double down on the current storage, saying the “waste should stay and be smothered in tonnes of concrete.” The European Community of Alsace has already said it will appeal the decision to seal the waste.

Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue

This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers

$60 million

Price the nonprofit Conservation Fund paid late last week for some 7,800 acres of land near Georgia’s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, a blackwater swamp and “one of the South’s last truly wild places,” the Washington Post reports. The deal ends a six-year legal fight against Twin Pines Minerals, an Alabama-based company whose proposal to build a titanium mine on the mineral-rich land had drawn criticism from environmentalists, scientists, and other concerned citizens. The biodiverse swamp, home to the headwaters of the Suwannee and the St. Marys rivers, is fed almost entirely by rainwater and stores vast amounts of carbon. Though Twin Pines Minerals insisted its mining operations wouldn’t impact the ecosystem, experts and local residents disagreed. 

On the Radar

A vote for clean water: Earlier this month, Alabama lawmakers voted 6 to 1 in favor of strengthening freshwater protections against 12 carcinogenic substances, a rare environmental win for the state’s advocacy groups. The decision was surprising to some, as the voting group — the appointed commission which oversees the Alabama Department of Environmental Management — “rarely votes against the department’s recommendations,” Inside Climate News reports. In 2015, the U.S. EPA released an updated Toxic Release Inventory and published new Integrated Risk Information System standards, though Alabama had never followed suit to update its own guidelines. Once implemented, the new law will put stricter limits on discharges of these toxic substances into waterways, many of which are popular fishing and swimming areas, and sources of drinking water. 

Mali’s Hydroponics: In Mali, where water shortages and a lack of arable land often cause tension between farmers and herders, some livestock owners have found a peaceful and water-conscious solution: using hydroponics farms to grow feed for their livestock, Deutsche Welle reports. Corn seeds are grown in a soil-less bucket, germinating in water and stacked next to each other on shelves in a weather-controlled shelter. After a week of growing, the feed is carried directly to the livestock, which limits how often they roam onto farmers’ crops in search of food.

In Context: An Encroaching Desert Intensifies Nigeria’s Farmer-Herder Crisis

In Context: HotSpots H2O: Spotlight on Herder-Farmer Conflict in West Africa

Fresh: From the Great Lakes Region

In Minnesota, Wildfire Impacts Lakes: In early May, the Camp House Fire burned several thousand acres of trees — and more than 100 homesteads — across northern Minnesota. As signs of life return to these forested understories, researchers are more concerned about the long-term health of lakes, Minnesota Public Radio reports. The fire burned its hottest along the ground, baking soils and clumping the earth together, turning it hydrophobic. As a result, especially in steep parts of the burned area, future rainfall is expected to flow across the landscape — rather than seep underground — and wash out into lakes. The large amounts of sediment expected to settle in the region’s lakes may deoxygenate the water and contribute to algal and bacterial blooms. 

In context: Billions in Federal Assistance after New Mexico’s Largest Wildfire. But Little Money to Repair Streams

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.

  • Experimental forecast hopes to warn when toxins from algal blooms in Lake Erie approach — Michigan Public
  • On solid ice: the plan to refreeze the Arctic — The Narwhal
  • Iconic whitefish on edge of collapse as Great Lakes biodiversity crisis deepens — Bridge Michigan
  • Consumers Energy in negotiations to sell its aging Michigan dams — Great Lakes Now

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer from Chicago. He is passionate about climate and cultural phenomena that often appear slow or invisible, and he examines these themes in his journalism, poetry, and fiction.