Global Rundown
- Reducing arsenic levels in drinking water has significant health benefits, according to a long-term study in Bangladesh, a global hotspot for groundwater arsenic contamination.
- Indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon are protesting the government’s proposal to increase shipping traffic and dredging on three major rivers.
- From 2018 through 2023, nearly 15 million pounds of pesticides containing PFAS “forever chemicals” were sprayed across agricultural land in California.
- Heavy rains and severe storm surges in Gaza this week caused millions of dollars worth of damage to tents and shelters, while worsening the quality of scant water supplies.
The Lead
As the COP30 climate conference comes to an end this week in Belém, Brazil, local Indigenous communities continue to protest peacefully along the Tapajós River — a major Amazon waterway that is now at risk to regular dredging, an increase in barge traffic, and the loss of fisheries and turtle habitat.
In August, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, signed a decree that would add the river to the country’s privatization program, one part of its larger Arco Norte project that seeks to make agricultural shipping and transportation across the Amazon more efficient.
The project already comprises 11 ports and five railroads. Along with the Tapajós, two other rivers proposed by Lula — the Madeira and Tocantins — would add three waterways to this industrial network, Mongabay reports.
“What’s at stake is the privatization of our rivers,” Gilson Tupinambá, coordinator of the Tupinambá Indigenous Council, told Sumaúma. “The Tapajós, Tocantins, and Madeira rivers are being turned into corridors for soy and mining exports, while our villages suffer from contaminated water, fewer fish, and more violence.”
More than 7,000 Indigenous people belonging to 14 different groups live along the banks of the Lower Tapajós. Amazon Watch reports that these communities have demanded a “project review and territorial protection” from the Brazilian government. They maintain that the expansion of the Arco Norte network to these waters threatens their ways of life and would bring ecological harm.
Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue
- The Next Deluge May Go Differently — Changes in wetlands policy, reductions in funding mean flooding will worsen.
- America’s Deadliest Waterborne Disease Is Not Letting Up — Legionnaires’ disease continues to sicken and kill people.
This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers
2.5 million
Average number of pounds of pesticides containing PFAS “forever chemicals” that were applied per year, from 2018 to 2023, across farms in California, according to a new report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG).
The non-profit analyzed data from the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation to find that nearly 15 million pounds of PFAS-containing pesticides — including 52 separate PFAS ingredients — were sprayed over agricultural land over the six-year period.
“Fresno County used the most, 2.1 million pounds, then Kern with 1.6 million pounds, and then San Joaquin County, at 923,000 pounds,” according to an EWG press release.
$4.5 million
Estimated cost of damages in Gaza this week after heavy rains and storm surges destroyed tents, mattresses, food, and medicine, much of which is vulnerable to the elements as conditions in the city worsen, Reuters reports. Stagnant water and runoff from this week’s storms have exacerbated health hazards, officials warn, as a lack of working sanitation systems left shelters with large piles of “rotting garbage” and “sewage-filled pools.”
On the Radar
A new study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that reducing arsenic levels in drinking water is associated with a 50 percent lower risk of heart disease, cancer, and other chronic illnesses.
Over 20 years, researchers from Columbia University tracked the health of 11,000 adults in Bangladesh, where continued and widespread arsenic contamination in wells supplying drinking water has been called “the largest poisoning of a population in history” by the World Health Organization.
More than 10,000 wells in the city of Araihazar were routinely tested, which inspired both local and national initiatives to label individual wells that were unfit for drinking. According to the study, “the average concentration in the wells people relied on fell by about 70 percent because many households switched to safer water sources.”
Wetland Watch
American Wetlands At Risk: On Monday, the U.S. EPA and Army Corps of Engineers proposed new rules that would redefine “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) under the federal Clean Water Act, potentially leaving millions of acres of wetlands and streams across the country without federal protection.
According to a Natural Resources Defense Council analysis, these regulatory changes would expose between 38 million and 70 million acres of wetlands to pollution, filling, and development — up to 85 percent of wetlands nationwide, the New York Times reports.
“When finalized, the rule will cut red tape and provide predictability, consistency, and clarity for American industry, energy producers, the technology sector, farmers, ranchers, developers, businesses, and landowners for permitting under the Clean Water Act,” an EPA news release reads.
Read more in this week’s Fresh Newsletter.
