| An earlier addition of the newsletter incorrectly titled the lead story, Where the Oil Runs Deep, Water Turns Foul, as "After More Than Two Decades, Landmark New York City Watershed Protection Plan Is Working." We apologize for the error and have corrected the title accordingly. |
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 | | A river running through the Rmeilan oil fields near the Gir Zero facility. © Abdullah Mohammed/PAX |
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| When Farhad Ahma returned to his native country last year on a work trip, his first thought was of his small daughter back home. The air around him was so thick with pollution, he couldn’t imagine she would survive the climate in this region of northeastern Syria. He was born and raised nearby, in a city called Qamishli, but he had lived in Berlin for some time now. Returning was a shock to his system.
The pollution’s birthplace is some 100 kilometers east from where Ahma stood. Amid a pastoral setting — villages nestled neatly in farmland, gushing rivers, sweeping mountains — rises the grimy machinery of fossil fuel extraction. Lakes of crude oil rigid as cement pock the landscape. Hundreds of makeshift refineries poke above the weeds, expelling clouds of burnt waste into the air. A putrid, sickly smell hangs overhead. Black oil seeps between the cracks and down the rivers, settling into the land.
It has been decades since the oil fields in northeastern Syria began poisoning land and water. |
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 | | Austin’s six-story, $125 million, 200,000 square-foot Central Library opened in October 2017 to rave reviews for its array of water collection, recycling, and reuse innovations. Photo © Brian Lehmann/Circle of Blue |
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| Emily Dickinson once wrote that “water is taught by thirst.” In Texas, a state that knows no bounds of economic ambition but is regularly disciplined by deep droughts, water is indeed taught by thirst. That is especially true in three big Texas cities that are globally significant innovators in water planning, technology, and use.
This is part three of Water, Texas, a five-part series on the consequences of the mismatch between runaway development and tightening constraints on the supply and quality of fresh water in Texas. |
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The volume of Covid-19 news can be overwhelming. Our live blog, updated throughout the day, helps you sort through it. It's a library for how water, sanitation, and hygiene connect to the pandemic — in the US and around the world.
Featured Covid-19 + water coverage from this week include: |
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In the midst of the global pandemic, Caribbean countries are preparing for the brunt of an Atlantic hurricane season that is more menacing than usual. |
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What's Up With Water - August 17, 2020
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.
This week's episode features coverage on the World Health Organization, which released a report this week highlighting the need for sanitation and handwashing facilities in schools around the world.
For international news we look at Venezuela, where public services are collapsing under the weight of economic crisis and government failure.
For news in the U.S. we turn to North Carolina, which witnessed another setback for fossil fuel pipeline developers, according to NC Policy Watch.
Finally, finding the solution to an expensive problem is the focus of our Circle of Blue story this week – on the success of a landmark watershed protection program in New York.
You can listen to the latest edition of What's Up With Water, as well as all past editions, by downloading the podcasts on iTunes, following Circle of Blue on Spotify, following on iHeart Radio, and subscribing on SoundCloud. |
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| From Circle of Blue's Archives: |
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 | | Australia, which suffered the severe consequences of a deep drought that ended in 2012, made big investments in coal production and export infrastructure. The question is, will that investment have substantial value over the 35-year design life of the facilities? Here, a coal loading terminal near Sydney. Photo © Aaron Jaffe / Circle of Blue |
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| A paper published in 2015 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States added fresh, peer-reviewed details about how a malicious four-year (2007 to 2010) drought in Syria played a role in touching off a calamitous civil war in 2011. The long rein of water scarcity ruined the farm economy and drove over 1 million farmers and their families into unstable resource-scarce cities inspired by the Arab Spring to rebel against authoritarian rule. |
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