Global Rundown
- Two communities in Pennsylvania, after enduring three years of contaminated well water, have declared emergencies seeking public funds to build new water lines.
- The construction of an irrigation dam in a protected Cambodian rainforest raises questions about the health of the region’s largest freshwater lake, located downstream.
- An effort to make Indonesia self-sufficient for both food and fuel is converting millions of acres of forest and wetlands into farmland.
- Ethiopia officially inaugurated its new dam, Africa’s largest hydropower project, which has heightened tensions with countries downstream on the Nile River.
- In Tennessee, where recent policy rollbacks have left a majority of its isolated wetlands vulnerable to development, a 7,500 acre habitat will be bought and conserved.
The Lead
Two townships in southwestern Pennsylvania have declared disaster emergencies and are seeking emergency funding to replace private wells that have been contaminated for more than three years, Inside Climate News reports.
Since June 2022, residents in Freeport Township have noticed “discoloration, odor and skin rashes when using water from their private wells,” according to a statement issued by Freeport officials this summer. Many residents, including those in neighboring Springhill Township, are attributing their polluted drinking water to the hazardous chemicals used in nearby fracking operations. Community members point specifically to so-called frac-outs — “in which fracking fluid pumped underground at high pressure leaks from its borehole into aquifers or escapes from the surface” — as the cause. Suspicion is directed primarily toward the Pittsburgh-based gas company EQT, which has operated nearby.
EQT claims innocence, even after a February report from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which determined the area’s well water was not fit for human consumption. Freeport Township is seeking between $21 million and $25 million in state and federal funding to lay a new public water line.
Meanwhile, a class-action lawsuit filed in 2024 by the area’s residents against EQT is pending.
Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue
- ICE Raids in California Block Farmworker Access to Clean Water — Threat of being seized by federal agents keeps workers in hiding without adequate water supplies.
- Mexico’s Fracking Reboot: A Critical First Step—but Only the Beginning
This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers
18,000
Acres of protected forest in Cambodia’s Kravanh National Park that since February have begun to be cleared for the construction of an irrigation dam, Mongabay reports. The dam is the fifth such hydropower project to enter into development inside the rainforested Cardamom Mountains, “one of Cambodia’s last biodiversity hotspots.” The dam is being built on a tributary that feeds into Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. Community members have expressed concerns that a reduction of inflows will hurt the lake’s fisheries, while upstream residents — who say they were not adequately consulted about the project — worry they will be unable to cultivate rice as a result of the changing water regime.
7 million
Acres of tropical forest and peatlands — an area the size of Maryland — on New Guinea that Prabowo Subianto, the president of Indonesia, plans to turn into a mega-farm to grow rice and sugarcane, Yale Environment 360 reports.The effort is part of Prabowo’s vision and campaign promise to end the country’s reliance on food and fuel imports. The project would help feed the country’s 283 million people and use sugarcane to make ethanol. But the mega-farm, currently characterized as the world’s largest deforestation project, would also destroy the homelands of more than 50,000 Indigenous Wanam people across 40 villages. Human rights advocates have criticized the government’s plans to exercise eminent domain.
There is also a matter of wetland loss. So far, 16,000 acres of swamp forest have been cleared to make way for rice farms, reversing a 2019 moratorium that prohibited the draining of peatlands. Thousands more acres of grasslands on hydric soils, another natural buffer against flooding, are at risk of being cleared. Meanwhile, researchers have shared skepticism about the area’s agricultural potential, questioning if its dry climate and acidic soils are actually suitable for rice production.
On the Radar
With fireworks, dance, and song, Ethiopia this week inaugurated its $5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the largest hydroelectric dam in Africa and a divisive project in the region since its construction on the Nile River was announced some 14 years ago.
Neighboring countries — especially Egypt, for whom the Nile supplies 97 percent of its fresh water — worry the dam, under Ethiopia’s control, will lead to domestic water shortages. Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told reporters last month that “whoever thinks Egypt will turn a blind eye to its water rights is mistaken.” Egypt lobbied the international community to withhold any outside funds for the dam’s construction, forcing Ethiopia to pay for it entirely.
The dam is also upstream of Sudan, whose regular flooding and power outages may now be mitigated by the project, NPR reports. But the country, which is in the midst of civil war, typically relies on Egypt regarding diplomatic issues, adding another wrinkle to the dam’s geopolitics.
Wetland Watch
Hatchie River: In April, the Tennessee Legislature approved a bill that removed protections for 80 percent of the state’s isolated, non-federally protected wetlands, a move that environmentalists have hailed as a major ecological loss that additionally leaves communities — particularly in the state’s western stretches — vulnerable to flooding. This week, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency announced it would be acquiring 7,500 acres of land along the Hatchie River to “secure the protection of sensitive wetlands and unique wildlife habitat while adding a large amount of huntable land,” the Tennessee Lookout reports.
