 | | Wells, including this one, are going dry in Doula, a village 55 kilometers (34 miles) northeast of New Delhi. Doula and many regions in India are facing a groundwater emergency triggered in part by thirsty industries, intensely irrigated agriculture, and hydrological mismanagement. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue |
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Wells serving many of the world’s rural households, farms, and factories are at risk of running dry if groundwater levels in their areas continue to decline.
According to a new analysis of 39 million wells, between 6 percent and 20 percent are no more than five meters below the top of the water table. The math in these scenarios is unforgiving. |
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 | | A resident of Detroit displays a past-due water bill. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue |
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In addition to a second round of stimulus payments, Congress included $638 million for households that were behind on their water bills. It was the first time that Congress had set aside federal funding for that purpose.
Little more than two months later, Congress doubled down on the approach, adding $500 million to what is now officially called the Low-Income Household Water Assistance Program, or LIHWAP. In total, more than $1.1 billion will be available to relieve households of water debts.
That’s where the process has slowed. As of late April, none of those funds has been allocated to states, let alone distributed to families in need. State allocations, to be set by the Department of Health and Human Services, are based on poverty levels and high housing costs.
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 | | Child in a Cox’s Bazar refugee camp washes their hands in a newly installed wash station as a precaution for Covid-19. Photo © United Nations Development Programme |
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People devoted to financing water, sanitation and hygiene in developing nations worried for much of 2020. Utility customers stopped paying their water bills. Funders altered their priorities. Heads of state turned their attention to other virus-related emergencies.
Even as the official numbers seemed to point to a potential catastrophe, the actual effects of the pandemic on delivering water and sanitation to people who needed it were not nearly as dire.
This article, the second in a series on the global status of universal access to water, sanitation, and hygiene, is produced through a collaboration between Circle of Blue and the Wilson Center, with support from The Hilton Foundation.
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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 over the next four months. |
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 | | Mike Bach spent around $8,000 to install a system of pipes and pumps to stop his late father’s home in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula from flooding. Photo © Mike Bach |
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| Access to ample water supplies could make Michigan a climate refuge. That scenario is attracting considerable attention in the Great Lakes State. But climate change also is disrupting the earth’s meteorological cycles. Which means more fierce Great Lakes region storms and more floods. The consequences are not evenly distributed. Or, in the words of Jeremy Porter, the head of research and development at First Street Foundation, a Brooklyn-based research group, flooding tells “two different stories.” |
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| Ash and gas spewing from La Soufriere volcano sparked a humanitarian emergency this month on the Caribbean islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines as frequent eruptions interfered with the island’s drinking water system and forced thousands of people to leave their homes. La Soufriere has been active for more than two weeks, following its initial blast on the morning of April 9, which launched smoke and rock across the northern half of the island and blanketed some communities with as much as 8 inches of ash. The most recent explosion, occurring late last week, sent an ash plume around 30,000 feet into the air. The volcano has decimated crops, destroyed island infrastructure, and contaminated water supplies for the northern half of the island. Experts predict that it could erupt for months. |
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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: - Drinking water pollution appears to be the top environmental concern for Americans, followed by pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.
- In Louisiana, lawmakers are considering a grading system that would issue report cards on the condition of the state’s community water systems.
- In California, a severe drought is rekindling fears that groundwater wells serving rural households will once again dry up en masse.
The risks of dry wells are not only in the Central Valley. This week Circle of Blue reports on a study that examined the global risk of failing wells. |
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 | | Rows of almond trees extend to the horizon in Kern County, California. Orchards like this one have sprouted in the last decade in areas of California’s Central Valley that are already water stressed. Photo © Brett Walton / Circle of Blue |
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American agriculture is a behemoth, a world-leading industry that, while meeting extensive domestic demands, still exports around $140 billion in farm products each year. Soybeans go to China. Cherries to Japan. Baskets of goods to Canada.
Some of that production rests on a risky and unstable foundation, a new study finds. It takes water to grow those crops, and an increasing portion of the country’s irrigation water is unsustainably mined from groundwater sources that are being depleted. Groundwater use is unsustainable in the long term when the amount of water that is extracted from an aquifer is greater than the amount that enters, via rainfall or artificial means. |
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