| Marine Blooms of Harmful Algae Increasing in Europe, Much of the Americas
Microscopic phytoplankton, which are the foundation of the marine food chain, are some of the world’s most abundant and ancient organisms. Though essential, they produce plenty of drawbacks, too. When they cluster along the coast, certain species paint the nearshore waters in a palette of fiery reds and mossy greens. Other toxin-producing species cause beach closures, kill fish, and lead to restrictions on harvesting clams and oysters. A particularly devastating bloom on the Chilean coast in 2016 killed an estimated 27 million farmed salmon and trout.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that these marine harmful algal blooms are on the rise. But are they really increasing globally?
According to a first-ever assessment, the answer is no. |
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| | | States, tribes, and territories are setting up the first-ever federal water bill assistance program. Photo © Matt Black for Circle of Blue |
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| Feds Release First Slice of Water Bill Assistance Funds
The Department of Health and Human Services released $166.6 million in federal funds for a program to help low-income residents pay off their past-due water bills or to reduce their water rates.
The new program — temporary for now, though some Democrats want permanent status — is called LIHWAP. Congress provided more than $1.1 billion to the first-ever federal water bill assistance program in separate appropriations in December and March. Not all the money will go to people in need. The funding released last week represents about 15 percent of the total. Fifteen percent is the amount that Congress allowed to be used for administrative costs in setting up the program at the state and local levels. This initial distribution is intended for that purpose. |
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| | | The Great Lakes Ready or Not project is produced by the Great Lakes News Collaborative, a partnership between Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now at DPTV and Michigan Radio that explores an essential question: Are Great Lakes residents and leaders ready for the stirred and shaken conditions that climatologists say we can expect? A new piece will be published every Tuesday. |
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| | | An ultralight glides along the shores of Lake Michigan. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue |
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| Michigan’s Climate-Ready Future: Wetland Parks, Less Cement, Roomy Shores
As climate change alters our world, Michigan’s bounty of fresh water — if managed smartly — could be the foundation of a thriving state economy and superior quality of life. The state still suffers from water pollution, for instance, in some cases with little power to punish those responsible. Our failure to prepare the state’s aging infrastructure for climate change has worsened flooding and imperiled water supplies.
But how might Michigan’s future look if we get it right? Experts say more ‘garden cities,’ fewer septic systems and the expansion of sustainable agriculture could hold the keys to the future. |
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Nestled among the Himalayan foothills of West Bengal is the village of Totopara.
Home of the Toto, a tribe that sustainably hunts and farms within the region’s diverse ecology, and resides in raised bamboo huts that skim the treetops.
The Toto’s new and unwelcome neighbors are the quarries that have been erected across the border in Bhutan’s Tading hills. Extracting materials from the quarries requires substantial water usage, and to meet these needs, miners and workmen have been diverting the brooks and channels upstream from Totopara.
Until a few years ago, Bhutanese authorities supplied Totopara with water. But the quarrying uprooted large hunks of rock, blocking this supply. For a Toto community that has faced neglect and environmental racism for decades, the worst may be yet to come.
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For the news you need to start the week, tune into “What’s Up With Water” fresh on Monday’s on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and SoundCloud. Featured coverage from this week’s episode of What’s Up With Water looks at: In research news, a study has found that lakes across the Earth’s middle latitudes are being starved of oxygen, threatening aquatic life with suffocation. In China, officials at the Ministry of Water Resources advised that major flooding may strike again this summer, especially in the central and southern regions. In the United States, documents obtained by the news site Undark showed that failure of aging dams across the country could flood major toxic waste sites. This week, Circle of Blue reports on private water storage accounts in a shrinking Lake Mead. |
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| From Circle of Blue's Archives: |
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| | | Formed some 2 million years ago at the intersection of three geologic faults, Clear Lake is a natural marvel, considered the oldest lake in North America. It is also the site of severe blooms of toxic cyanobacteria from June through November that obscure the water and are a risk to health and safety. Photo © Brett Walton / Circle of Blue |
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California Tribes Call Out Degradation of Clear Lake
Clear Lake, about 100 miles north of San Francisco, is relatively shallow, warm and, by its nature, biologically productive. That’s why it’s known as one of the best bass fishing spots in the country. It’s also considered the oldest lake in North America, which means that algae have probably been present for some portion of its 2 million years. Indigenous groups have lived along the lake’s clean waters and fertile shores for some 12,000 years.
But over the last century and a half, Clear Lake’s ecological balance has come undone. White settlers planted orchards, dug mercury mines, and built homes and towns. In the process an estimated 85 percent of the lake’s nutrient-absorbing wetlands were destroyed. Unimpeded flows of nitrogen and phosphorus tipped Clear Lake into hyperproductivity, or eutrophication. Algae and cyanobacteria blooms worsened in the 1970s, starting improving through the 1990s, and now are as extensive as any in generations. |
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