 | | King tide flooding in August 2019 in Mapunapuna, an area of Honolulu north of Daniel K. Inouye International Airport that was built on fill and floods during the highest tides of the year. Photo courtesy of Hawaii Sea Grant King Tides Project, 2019. |
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| For Honolulu, a sea wall would be a losing strategy against sea-level rise because a wall would not address the most serious flooding problem. The largest source of inundation for the city’s roughly 350,000 residents is not the ocean. It’s groundwater.
Shellie Habel, a coastal geologist with the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and Hawaii Sea Grant, and her colleagues found that little more than 2 to 3 percent of flooded area in Honolulu’s urban core is a result only of overland marine flooding. That range holds for the four sea-level elevations that the study looked at.
Groundwater flooding, by contrast, is the predominant individual source of flooding. How does this happen? Groundwater in the coastal region is hydrologically connected to the ocean. When the Pacific swells, so does the inland water table. |
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 | | A general view shows a cross-section of the Karuma 600 megawatts hydroelectric power project under construction on River Nile, Uganda February 21, 2018. REUTERS/James Akena |
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| This story originally appeared in Reuters and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
Lake Victoria’s water levels have surged to their highest level in more than half a century after about eight months of relentless downpours, posing a threat to Uganda’s hydropower plants, the country said last Friday.
The east African country relies almost entirely on four hydroelectric power dams on the River Nile, which is fed by the lake, and any threat to this energy infrastructure has major economic consequences. |
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The volume of Covid-19 news can be overwhelming. We've started a live blog, updated throughout the day, to help you sort through it. It's a library for how water, sanitation, and hygiene connect to the pandemic, both in the US and globally.
Featured Covid-19 + water coverage from this week include: |
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The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in countries identified as priorities in the humanitarian response to the coronavirus pandemic has surpassed 30,000, according to data collected by ReliefWeb, an online hub for international aid work.
The data is drawn from the United Nations, NGOs, and other relief agencies. It covers 25 countries that are experiencing major humanitarian crises, from Venezuela and Somalia to Myanmar. Most are enduring widespread shortages of food, water, and healthcare, and many are enmeshed in long-lasting conflicts. |
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What's Up With Water - May 4, 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 there is some good news for the country’s parched and beleaguered eastern states.
Additional international coverage looks at Germany, where low flows on the Rhine have forced cargo ships to operate at reduced capacity.
We also talk about Argentina, where the Iguazu River is running at 13 percent of its normal flow.
Finally, this week's featured Circle of Blue story on U.S. Congressional negotiations over financial aid to water utilities and their customers during the coronavirus pandemic. 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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 | | A runner passes rising waters along the Mill Valley-Sausalito Path, a multi-use trail in Marin County, California that skirts an inlet of San Francisco Bay. A king tide on February 7, 2020, pushed the bay to one of its highest levels of the year. Photo © Brett Walton/Circle of Blue |
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| As bay levels rise, so do groundwater levels along one of the most developed shorelines on the West Coast. The rise in groundwater contributes to flooding in low-lying communities in the nine counties that ring San Francisco Bay. Even before it comes to the surface, rising groundwater casts a net of damage. It infiltrates sewer pipes, which can cause backups and burden treatment plants with excess water. It destabilizes building foundations, corrodes pipes, and could shake loose legacy pollutants bound to soil particles, setting the toxic substances free in the environment. |
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