 | | Homes in Paradise were destroyed in the Camp Fire, in November 2018. Photo © Brett Walton / Circle of Blue |
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| Wildfires in California have been brutal in recent years, not only torching millions of acres of forest but also blazing through developed areas with vicious force.
Fifteen of the 20 most destructive fires in state history have occurred since 2015, obliterating thousands of homes and buildings statewide, from the Sierra Nevada foothills to the Coast Range.
Because these fires are now burning where people live — or, people are living where the fires are — new hazards to health and infrastructure have emerged in the ashes. Among them is the contamination of drinking water, which occurred after catastrophic fires in Santa Rosa, in 2017, and in Paradise a year later. Chemical contaminants such as benzene, a carcinogen that affects blood and bone marrow, were also found in community water systems in Santa Cruz County this year following the CZU Lightning Complex Fire. |
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 | | Adding chlorine disinfection to centralized water treatment plants like Chicago’s Jardine Purification Plant contributed to a substantial decline in waterborne disease outbreaks associated with those facilities. Photo © Alex Garcia / Circle of Blue |
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| Contaminated water is making U.S. residents sick — millions of them each year.
Though this tally includes summertime nuisances like swimmer’s ear, the most costly and deadliest risks are the microbes that grow within building plumbing or in rivers and lakes, according to a study from the federal government’s top health agency.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that some 7.2 million cases of waterborne disease were recorded in the country in 2014.
Of those cases, about 601,000 required an emergency room visit and 118,000 resulted in hospitalization. The cost of those trips to the doctor added up, amounting to about $3.3 billion.
In total, there were about 6,600 deaths attributed to the 17 diseases in the analysis, which will appear in the January 2021 edition of Emerging Infectious Diseases, a peer-reviewed journal published by the CDC. |
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 | | The Colorado River Indian Tribes reservation straddles its namesake river. Shown here are irrigated fields in the portion of the reservation in Arizona. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue |
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| The water rights held by the Colorado River Indian Tribes are a valuable asset, and tribal leadership is seeking congressional approval to cash in on them — for the benefit of the tribes and the state’s high-growth cities and maybe the environment.
The tribes — known as CRIT for short — have lands that stretch along 56 miles of the lower Colorado River. Eighty-five percent of the reservation is in Arizona, with the remainder in California. The tribes’ right to divert 662,402 acre-feet from the river for use on land in Arizona is more than twice the Colorado River water that is allocated to the state of Nevada.
By law, that water is to be used on the reservation. But if CRIT convinces Congress to allow off-reservation leasing, the legal change would free up a large volume of water in a region that is mired in a severe drought and is drying out as the planet warms. According to CRIT’s planning, as much as 150,000 acre-feet per year could be made available for leasing. |
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In Assam, a state in northeastern India, authorities at Kaziranga National Park are restoring six wetlands and collecting rainwater to prevent human-animal conflict during the water-scarce winter months. |
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What's Up With Water - December 14, 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 Australia, where new documents show that a plan to convert three open-cut coal mines into “pit lakes” would harm the Latrobe River system.
For news in the United States, the city of Flint, Michigan is nearing a milestone. The Associated Press reports that fewer than 500 lead service lines remain in the Michigan city that just a few years ago was in the midst of a lead crisis.
Elsewhere in Michigan, the city of Detroit announced that it will extend a moratorium on water shutoffs until 2022.
This week Circle of Blue reports on the Colorado River basin, where legal maneuvers could boost flexibility for water use in a drying region. |
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| From Circle of Blue's Archives: |
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 | | The CZU Lightning Complex Fire burned through the forests of Santa Cruz County, California. The fire damaged water infrastructure for San Lorenzo Valley Water District. Photo courtesy of Carly Blanchard/SLVWD |
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| As they tear through forests and developed areas, fires in California, Oregon, and Washington destroyed water infrastructure and released chemical contaminants.
The destruction and contamination of drinking water systems is a new and unsettling chapter in the story of wildfires in the West. Past fires have burned watersheds, depositing into reservoirs debris and ash that interfere with the water-treatment process. Now, subdivisions are burning, putting the plumbing itself at risk. |
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