Global Rundown
- Violent rainfall hit western India this week, killing 14 people and damaging produce and grains.
- Five alpine lakes in western Argentina are rapidly vanishing, a consequence of both climate variability and water diversions.
- England, whose reservoir capacity hasn’t been upgraded in more than 30 years, is preparing for summer drought after a particularly dry spring.
- Decades of steelmaking and native vegetation loss in southeastern Brazil have lowered groundwater levels by more than 15 feet since the 1970s.
The Lead
In Argentina’s Laguna Blanca National Park, on the shores of five alpine lakes, scientists pose with wooden measuring sticks taller than themselves.
These devices, once submerged in the Patagonian lakes to measure their depth, have become completely exposed over the past two decades. Since 2007, Laguna Blanca and the park’s four other lakes — home to “black-neck swans, red-eyed silvery grebes and dark-spotted endemic frogs” — have lost 52 percent of their surface area, Inside Climate News reports.
The park, a Ramsar site demarcated by UNESCO as a “wetland of international importance,” has been highly vulnerable to both anthropogenic climate changes and human intervention, according to a study published earlier this year in the journal Science of the Total Environment. Warmer atmospheric temperatures and variable precipitation have contributed to their shrinkage. But regional farmers, who between 2020 and 2025 built more than 50 water-diverting irrigation channels leading from Laguna Blanca’s main source, have also had a major impact.
As a result of its smaller volume, nutrients in the lakes are more concentrated. Algal blooms, now more common, have deterred tourists from visiting and hurt local economies reliant on their spending.
Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue
- Dry Colorado River Forecast Gets Drier — Challenges ahead as snowpack fails to produce much runoff.
- Utah’s Fluoride Ban in Drinking Water Won’t Settle Dispute on Safety — New legislation reflects influence of citizen movement to check government health directives.
This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers
14
People who have died amidst heavy pre-monsoon storms in India’s western Gujarat state, Reuters reports. More than 3.5 inches fell in the hardest-hit districts, coinciding with deadly lightning strikes, home collapses, and the uprooting of trees. Growers in the region have reported extensive damage to their mango crops, and expressed frustration with the government for failing to warn them of the storms, according to India Express. Anju Sharma, secretary of the Gujarat agriculture department, said cotton, cumin, and rice crop losses would be assessed this week. Another 16 people were injured in the rains.
30+
Years since a reservoir has last been built in England, the Guardian reports, leaving the country especially vulnerable to bouts of dry weather like it is currently enduring. Farmers, water utilities, and government officials are preparing for a summer drought if massive amounts of rain do not fall soon. At the current precipitation rate, the country would need deluges like those last experienced in 2012, when heavy rains spurred country-wide flooding, to avoid drought conditions. Unusually warm and sunny spring temperatures have exacerbated the issue by increasing evapotranspiration across the United Kingdom, which received just 56 percent of its usual April rainfall. Near the Thames, this figure was closer to 13 percent. Scotland, last month, shared an “early warning” of water scarcity as a result of these lows. Compared to historic reservoir levels, which are usually 98 percent full at this time of year, “the Haweswater reservoir is already depleted to 62.3 percent.”
On the Radar
Fifty years ago, in southeastern Brazil’s Alto Jequitinhonha Valley, some 250,000 acres of land were taken from local farmers by the country’s military dictatorship, and handed over to state-owned steel companies in the name of economic production. In the decades since, “60 percent of the native vegetation in this expanse … was replaced by sprawling plantations of eucalyptus trees, which in turn were cut down to produce charcoal,” Mongabay reports.
For local communities, losing the region’s natural wetlands ecosystem has been devastating. The area’s thirsty eucalyptus monoculture, with individual trees towering more than 60 feet high, consumes an estimated 8.2 billion gallons of water per year. Since the mid-1970s, the valley’s groundwater levels have been lowered by nearly 15 feet.
Growers struggle to source enough water for their personal needs and crops. Many of the roughly 2,500 farming families who live in the valley have resorted to “drilling wells, building dams and installing water tanks for rainwater collection.”
49th State Focus: Trump Cuts NOAA Service That Monitors Sea Ice
Snow and Ice Data Defunded: The Trump Administration announced this week that it would decommission the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) services that monitor and collect data pertaining to “sea ice, snowpack, glaciers, and other Arctic conditions” in Alaska, the Alaska Beacon reports. Among the losses will be photographs of changing glaciers held within the World Glacier Inventory and a nearly 200 year-old dataset comprising monthly analyses of sea ice extent.
Fresh: From the Great Lakes Region
Duluth EPA Lab: The Minnesota city will consider a resolution to join state and federal lawmakers in requesting the Trump Administration keep the town’s Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division lab open, Northern News Now reports. Roughly 150 federal employees work at the EPA facility, which “contributes $15 million to Minnesota’s economy each year.”
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.
- Tribar pleads guilty for violating federal Clean Water Act — Michigan Public
- More Fire, More Water — Great Lakes Now
- Study: Washing machines send ‘toxic stew’ of microfibers into Great Lakes — Bridge Michigan
- A dam destroyed their river. 61 years later, two First Nations fought for justice — The Narwhal