Climate change produces massive rains that are overwhelming the capacity to adapt.
A warming climate is energizing these storms, causing them to grow more powerful. At the same time, flood risk is increasing due to more development in flood plains and paved surfaces replacing water-absorbing landscapes. Rising seas are an additional threat on the coasts. More people live in harm’s way while there are fewer places for surplus water to flow.
Ninth Circuit Appellate Court Hears Arguments to Compel Federal Action.
For the third time in two decades the Environmental Protection Agency appeared in federal Appellate Court to defend its admittedly flawed approach to regulating the billions of pounds of manure running off into the nation’s waters from large industrial animal feeding operations. But unlike the previous Appellate Court cases in 2005 and 2011, when the plaintiffs were the major agricultural trade organizations seeking to weaken or eliminate agency regulations, this time the case was brought by 13 national and local environmental organizations arguing that after years of inaction EPA needs to drastically strengthen its oversight.
State is a center of manure biodigester development.
Anticipating a surge of funding for building manure biodigesters that capture methane for electricity and transportation fuels from millions of tons of farm animal wastes Michigan’s environmental agency last year drafted more rigorous operating rules to protect state waters from a new tide of farm-based pollution.
Army Corps of Engineers raising the height of an underwater barrier, or sill, across the bed of the Mississippi River, in southern Louisiana, in September 2023. The Corps is again building the temporary sill this year, in an effort to keep salt water from the Gulf of Mexico from moving upriver. Photo courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers/Ryan Labadens
Army Corps builds a temporary barrier to block salt water encroaching on the nation’s largest river.
Salt water is moving upriver from the Gulf of Mexico. Drought in the central United States has weakened the mighty river’s flow to the point that it can no longer push out saltier water from the Gulf. For Plaquemines Parish, which draws directly from the river, this intrusion is a threat to its water source.
Circle of Blue brings our readers to the front lines of the biggest stories around the most important issue on the planet: The world’s water.
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