- The herbicide atrazine has been found in concentrations exceeding safe levels in 25 percent of rivers in the continental United States.
- More than 100 people in India and Nepal have been killed in landslides and flooding.
- Settlers in the West Bank have been diverting natural spring water to create artificial pools, exacerbating Palestinian communities’ freshwater crises.
- A new analysis of a proposed gold mine in Alaska suggests that even a small spill could have “generational” consequences for freshwater and fish health.
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According to a new report from the Center for Biological Diversity, the herbicide atrazine — known to have severe developmental impacts on human and animal hormones — is contaminating 25 percent of rivers, some 860,000 miles of waterways, in the continental United States.
The community consequences are far-reaching. More than 20 percent of the country’s drinking-water surface-intake facilities source water from these streams.
“This highly contaminated area also contains at least 675,000 wells currently supplying potable water to domestic households and commercial properties such as hotels, restaurants, and office buildings,” according to the report.
Five hotspots with some of the highest levels of atrazine were centered in the analysis: Chesapeake Bay, the Midwest Corn Belt, Lake Okeechobee, the Lower Mississippi River, and the Texas Gulf Coast.
More than 100 people have been killed in northern India and Nepal after days of heavy rains spurred flooding and landslides.
During an exceptionally heavy period of monsoon season precipitation, some 2.6 inches of rain fell from Friday through Sunday in India’s Uttar Pradesh region — far more than the 0.25 inches usually expected over the same duration, Al Jazeera reports.
In the eastern state of Odisha, some 70,000 people “living in low-lying areas were evacuated after rivers rose due to heavy downpours.” Some 2,000 hectares of cropland have also been destroyed, according to the dpa German Press Agency.
In Context: The Nepal Flood Looked Fake. It Wasn’t
Natural springs in the West Bank, an increasingly important source of drinking water and irrigation for Palestinian communities, are being diverted by Israeli settlers to fill ancient pools created as tourist attractions, the Associated Press reports.
Since 1967, Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank has been deemed illegal by leading international political and human rights organizations, as well as the United Nations. Now, settler diversions of precious freshwater sources are being used, experts say, to further delegitimize Palestinian claims to the land.
Israeli attacks in recent years on Palestine’s water infrastructure have crippled water access and left a majority of freshwater that does still flow unfit for human consumption.
A new environmental study of the proposed Donlin Gold Mine in Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta has revealed potentially devastating consequences for the area’s freshwater supply and habitat if even a small tailings spill occurs.
The analysis, published last week by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, confirms that a spill of just 27 percent of the mine’s tailings storage facility would cause downstream metal contamination in wetlands and waters lasting more than a century; would lead to “generationally lower abundance” of fish; and harm “subsistence plants, including blueberries, low-bush cranberries, and other edible species.”
A toxic wave of spilled sludge would hit the nearby Alaska Native village of Crooked Creek within just 90 minutes, Mining.com reports.
In the wake of these results — which were court-ordered after the original 0.5 percent spill study was deemed too small in scope — environmental advocates are now pushing for an analysis of a possible 100 percent spill.
“Today’s analysis is an alarm bell for the Yukon-Kuskokwim region,” Hannah Foster, an attorney for Earthjustice, said in a statement.
The proposed project includes the construction of an open-pit mine, natural gas-fired power plant, and the construction of a 316-mile-long natural gas pipeline that originates in Cook Inlet. If approved, the mine would sit roughly 10 miles north of Crooked Creek, which itself is located on the 702-mile-long Kuskokwim River, the country’s largest river system contained entirely inside a single state.
“Our primary concern all along has been the Kuskokwim River, which has sustained our customary and traditional practices for generations,” Organized Village of Kwethluk President Mary Nicolai said in a statement. “The Court recognized the importance of this sustainable resource we have always relied on and that must be protected by law, but unfortunately the study the federal agencies prepared still falls very short of doing what it needs to do.”
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