Global Rundown
- Dredging and a continued loss of sediment in British Columbia’s Fraser River threatens the delta’s salmon populations, farmland, and resistance to floods.
- Vulnerable lesser flamingos have lost one of their four African breeding sites following the dumping of untreated sewage at a South African dam.
- Namibia, facing one of its worst droughts in over a century, has secured funding to improve water infrastructure and access.
- A proposed oil exploration project at the mouth of the Amazon River moves one step closer to breaking ground.
The Lead
Since the last Ice Age more than 10,000 years ago, the Fraser Delta in coastal British Columbia, has become a diverse freshwater ecosystem.
Retreating glaciers gave rise to productive rivers and expansive floodplains that extended inland from the Pacific Ocean. The lush region became the home of First Nations communities. Later, the city of Vancouver was founded where fresh and saltwater converged.
As recently as the 1980s, officials measured 17 million cubic meters of mud and sand passing through the province’s lower Fraser River each year, an amount “equivalent to flushing the weight of 115,000 blue whales into the sea,” Business In Vancouver reports. This shifting sediment is crucial for estuarine habitat and geology, creating gravel riffles and channels wherein salmon spawn and escape heat. Migrating birds take refuge in these same deposits. And tidal grasses and marshes protect cities from floods and sea level rise — threats that, along with population growth and sinking land, could cost Vancouver an estimated $303 billion by 2070.
But despite the importance of sediment in the region, the Canadian government no longer monitors sand and mud movement. In fact, to ensure ships can pass safely through its ports, Vancouver continues to dredge 3.7 million cubic meters of sand each year. This loss is potentially devastating for the longevity of infrastructure, the safety of ports, and the livelihoods of those living along its waterways. Farmers living near the delta have reported an inundation of saltwater on their land, with one losing some $200,000 worth of blueberries.
Over the last 50 years, dredging deepened the Fraser River’s channel by three meters; over the next 25 years, it could sink another eight meters, “a ‘huge change’ that could lead to a massive amount of erosion along the river’s edge.”
Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue
- Despite U.S. Research Resistance, Great Lakes Aims to Be Silicon Valley for Water — Business leaders want to export solutions to the world’s water problems.
- Thunder Bay is Bringing its Great Lake Shoreline Back — Decades of industrial pollution on Lake Superior has seen stretches of its shore deemed areas of environmental concern for both Canada and the U.S. A massive investment of time and money is letting nature return.
This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers
3
Number of African breeding sites which now exist for the near-threatened lesser flamingo after a fourth site, an artificial dam in South Africa, has become too contaminated by toxic sewage, Reuters reports. For years, flamingos gathered at the Kamfers Dam in the city of Kimberley to breed, a spectacle some observers called a “sea of pink.” In 2020, 71,000 flamingos came to its waters and some 5,000 chicks were born. But a lack of quality control at the dam has meant that an average of 36 megaliters of untreated sewage are being dumped each day at the site. Some birds succumbed to botulism, and flocks haven’t returned in several breeding seasons.
27,000
Number of people living in Namibia’s Ohangwena and Oshikoto regions who will benefit from an $85 million loan the southern African nation secured last week from the German Development Bank to improve fresh water access and security, the Namibia Economist and Smart Water Magazine report. The loan will fund the construction of more than 80 miles of new pipeline and upgrades to reservoir systems, rural desalination units, and treatment stations. According to the United Nations, prolonged drought over the past decade in Namibia has disproportionately impacted women and young girls whose reproductive health, access to education, and economic stability are imperiled when access to water is lost.
In context: The Stream, March 27, 2024: When Drought Comes to Poor Rural Areas, Women and Girls Suffer Most, UN Says
On the Radar
Last week, Brazil’s environment agency approved a marine animal emergency response plan put forth by state oil company Petrobras — a key step forward in the latter’s plan to begin offshore drilling at the mouth of the Amazon River, Mongabay reports. Critics of the plan cite the project’s potential to harm not only marine coral reefs, but wetland and delta ecosystems as sea levels rise and coastal farmland becomes inundated with salty waters.
Fresh: From the Great Lakes Region
Manure Runoff Sparks Fish Die-off: Several hundred trout were killed earlier this month when more than an inch of rain fell within a half hour in Monroe County, Wisconsin. Roughly 11,500 gallons of manure had recently been injected into local fields, and an unknowable amount of the liquid quickly flowed into Spring Valley Creek, Moore Creek, and the Kickapoo River following the deluge, Wisconsin Public Radio reports.
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.
- A hard-fought milestone for Flint’s water, but uncertainty ahead — Bridge Michigan
- Here comes the region’s first next-generation nuclear reactor — Great Lakes Now
- Great Lakes temperature extremes intensifying due to climate change — Michigan Public
- Billions of litres of sewage in the rivers — can it be fixed? — Winnipeg says it could take until 2095 to fix its sewage woes. Other cities — from Ottawa to Paris — offer a glimpse of what it could look like to swim in the rivers again