The Stream, October 27, 2026: Some 6,400 Spills into the Great Lakes Released an Unknown Volume of Oil in Last Decade, Study Shows

• More than 6,400 oil spills, most of which were poorly documented and understudied, took place in the Great Lakes over the last decade, a new report shows. 
• The global demand for lithium, newly forecast to triple by 2050 and grow especially in the United States, will be limited by the availability of freshwater. 
• PFAS “forever chemicals” were found in 83 percent of monitored lakes and streams across America between 2022 and 2024. 
• The U.S. military is accused of weaponizing El Niño conditions by forcing civilians in Somalia into flood-prone areas.

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A new study from Lake Superior State University (LSSU) documented more than 6,400 oil spills in the Great Lakes between 2015 and 2024. 

The analysis, published in the Journal of Great Lakes Research, highlights gaps in public awareness, reporting, and follow-up studies on the ecological impacts of these events, depending on their size. Though some 94 percent of identified incidents were considered small — fewer than 500 liters — these likely accounted for a majority of cumulative spill volume. 

Importantly, these numbers are an estimate; just 35 percent of spills in U.S. waters included a reported spill volume, while the volumes of Canadian spills prior to 2023 were not recorded at all. As a result, it is unclear exactly how much oil spilled into the world’s largest supply of surface freshwater during the past ten years.

“This review gives us a decade-long snapshot of reported oil spills across the Great Lakes,” Cecilia Heuvel, postdoctoral research associate at LSSU’s Center for Freshwater Research and Education, said in a statement. “We tend to focus on the large spills because of their impacts, but smaller spills happen much more frequently, and their ecological effects remain largely unstudied.”

In U.S. waters, where 3,654 incidents were reported, shipping-related spills were most common. In Canadian waters, where 2,799 incidents were reported, facility-related spills topped the list. 

The report also highlights the importance of international cooperation in monitoring incidents. The St. Clair, Detroit, and St. Mary’s rivers — which all flow along the U.S.-Canada border — “had substantially higher spill densities per unit area than the open lakes.”

The global demand for lithium, which requires large volumes of water to mine, is expected to more than triple by 2050.

The forecast, which comes from London-based research firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, expects electric vehicles to account for 76 percent of lithium demand in the coming decades. Already, the industry is showing signs of rapid growth: just last month, two in three cars sold in China were electric, Yale Environment 360 reports. 

To accommodate this competition, the firm estimates that 134 new lithium mines will be needed globally. A significant share of these operations will likely arrive in North America, whose share of the world’s lithium by 2050 is predicted to increase from 1.7 percent in 2026 to 13 percent by 2050.

But freshwater availability remains an important limiting factor for the industry’s growth. According to Wetlands International, mining one metric ton of lithium requires the evaporation of 2 million liters of water. A study published in May in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, which analyzed water pressures and lithium, concluded that “water scarcity could hinder the ability of the United States to produce enough lithium to meet domestic demand thereby necessitating higher imports.”

“Even under the wettest climate scenarios, most subbasins will likely face water shortages and be unable to support all predicted future demands without relying on inter-basin transfers,” the authors wrote. “The risk of water shortages highlights the role of water consumption, governance, allocation, and efficiency across sectors in shaping long-term water sustainability and potential constraints on domestic lithium supply chain development.”

In Context: The Race for Lithium Is Becoming a Race for Water

The United States military is being accused of exploiting “climatic factors” in Somalia by coordinating airstrikes that are pushing both militants and civilians into flood-prone areas, the Guardian exclusively reports.

For years, the U.S. has intervened with military support and counterterrorism operations in the ongoing Somali civil war. Most attacks from American and Somali forces have concentrated in the country’s south-central regions, which is the stronghold of al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group that controls some 30 percent of the country.

But expert analyses suggest that recent strikes are following a legally dubious strategy with outsize consequences for all area residents, including women and children. The armies are accused of weaponizing El Niño conditions by using existing satellite imaging and historical climate records — usually referenced in humanitarian contexts to keep populations away from climate risks in wartime — to do the opposite. 

Reports show that attacks are forcing civilians into the floodplain of the River Juba, which is rising amid historic El Niño conditions this summer. During the last significant El Niño weather event in 2023, the same area flooded significantly and displaced more than 1.2 million people, according to the Guardian. 

“The airstrikes are forcing people to go close to the river. It’s an extremely aggressive offensive, exploiting El Niño as a weapon of war to push the population into flood-prone areas,” an unnamed source told the outlet. “The official line is that they are targeting military positions and al-Shabaab, but because al-Shabaab is embedded within the community, it’s difficult to avoid collateral damage.”

Spokespeople from the U.S. military have denied the accusations.

PFAS “forever chemicals” were detected in 83 percent of 1,602 monitored lakes and streams across the United States between 2022 and 2024.

The finding comes from a new report published by Environment America, a non-profit research and policy center, which tested waterways in 40 states. 

Several hotspots emerged from the center’s study. All monitored locations along the Mississippi River between Minnesota and Wisconsin contained PFAS; the same was true of dozens of test sites along Lake Ontario in New York, and Tiger Lake, a popular freshwater fishing lake in Polk County, Florida. 

The highest concentrations were measured near facilities that historically leak PFAS into the environment. These include stormwater ponds in Brunswick, Maine, near Brunswick Executive Airport; a lake near Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico; Minnesota’s Sargent Creek, located next to a fire training facility; and waterways near Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport and Puerto Rico’s Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport. 

“America’s waterways should be clean and free of toxic chemicals,” John Rumpler, the organization’s clean water director and an author of the report, said in a statement. “Yet PFAS contamination of our rivers and lakes is widespread. We shouldn’t have to worry about tainted drinking water or catching and eating contaminated fish.”

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