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Thames Water Utilities, the United Kingdom’s largest water company, is creating a system to alert the public to sewage discharges into British rivers and streams. The move, announced earlier this month, comes after the company pleaded guilty in court and was fined £2.3 million for spilling improperly treated sewage into a stream in the town of Henley-on-Thames in 2016 that killed more than 1,100 fish.
After numerous calls from the public and environmental organizations for more data on sewage pollution, Thames Water will begin sending real-time email alerts to nearby residents and those using the rivers. The company plans to place several data-collection systems in waterways by April, working alongside the group End Sewage Pollution. Thames Water will also test the river to better understand the amount of bacteria in the water and where the pollution is entering. |
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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 South Africa, the largest reservoir for the Nelson Mandela Bay metro area dropped to a historic low.
- In the United States, Louisiana is at the forefront of groundwater loss. Groundwater is the source of drinking water for two-thirds of Louisiana residents, and it is depleting faster than almost anywhere else in the country.
- In Michigan, lawyers who negotiated hundreds of millions of dollars for victims of the Flint water crisis would like to be compensated.
This week Circle of Blue reports on slow progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals for water. |
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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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 | | A sign at the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge after flood waters starting receding last year. Photo © Lester Graham / Michigan Radio |
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Wetlands Can Help Prevent Property Damage and Save Lives During Floods
Midland and other cities were hit hard by a flood caused by of a weak dam.
More than 2,500 homes were damaged. There was an estimated $245 million dollars in property damage.
If that flood happened a few years ago, the damage could have been worse. But, there’s been a change. One thousand acres of restore wetlands helped reduce the severity of that flood. |
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| From Circle of Blue's Archives: |
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 | | Governor Stephen Roe Lewis, leader of the Gila River Indian Community, stands in the dry bed of the Gila River, outside of Sacaton, Arizona. Elected last year, Lewis proclaimed 2015 the Year of Our Water Rights for his tribe. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue |
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With the oldest claims to water, the Colorado River Basin's 29 federally recognized Indian tribes command a considerable role in directing the region’s future. Combined, they hold rights to a substantial portion of the Colorado River’s flow: roughly 20 percent, or 2.9 million acre-feet, which is more water than Arizona’s allocation from the river. The tribal share, moreover, will increase, perhaps by as much as hundreds of thousands of acre-feet as the 13 tribes without confirmed rights settle their claims with federal and state governments.
Years of careful negotiations, spurred by a desire to avoid long-running court battles, produced legal settlements that provide water for tribes, cities, and industries. Beneficial to all sides, the settlements were a catalyst for urban development and a tool for funding Indian water systems. Perhaps more importantly, the settlements are the foundation of a partnership, an inescapable union, between tribes and their neighbors, a union that will grow in importance as water becomes scarcer in the warming and drying American West.
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