A group of protesters gathered at Sugarman’s Corner in downtown Klamath Falls on Saturday, preparing to welcome a 25-car caravan of mostly Klamath Tribal members calling for solutions to the Klamath Basin’s water crisis.
A man walked by the demonstrators, eyeing their signs with statements like “Peace and Healing in the Klamath Basin,” “Water Justice is Social Justice” and “Undam the Klamath.”
The water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from dire to catastrophic this week as federal regulators shut off irrigation water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said they would not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or to a half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of migrating birds each year.
In what is shaping up to be the worst water crisis in generations, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said it will not release water this season into the main canal that feeds the bulk of the massive Klamath Reclamation Project, marking a first for the 114-year-old irrigation system.
Democratic lawmakers and advocates are urging Joe Biden to back legislation proposing unprecedented investment in America’s ailing water infrastructure amid the country’s worst crisis in decades that has left millions of people without access to clean, safe, affordable water.
After enduring multiple days of freezing temperatures and Texans dripping faucets to prevent frozen pipes from bursting, cities across the state warned Wednesday that water levels are dangerously low, and it may be unsafe to drink.
Amid a global pandemic and protests against police brutality, Erin Brockovich is trying to get America to pay attention to yet another issue: water.
“We are in a water crisis beyond anything you can imagine. Pollution and toxins are everywhere, stemming from the hazardous wastes of industry and agriculture. We’ve got more than 40,000 chemicals on the market today with only a few hundred regulated. We’ve had industrial byproducts discarded into the ground and into our water supply for years. This crisis affects everyone – rich or poor, black or white, Republican or Democrat. Communities everywhere think they are safe when they are not,” she wrote in an opinion story for the Guardian.
Ageing infrastructure, legacy pollution and emerging contaminants across the US are driving a growing urgency to do something about America’s water crisis.
Fighting the COVID-19 pandemic requires access to safe, clean water. While some Americans decry their “loss of freedom” by being told to wear a mask in public spaces, others don’t have the freedom to wash their hands with clean water.
Millions of families in America risk losing running water over unpaid bills as moratoriums on shutoffs expire across the country, despite record levels of unemployment and mounting fatalities from the coronavirus pandemic.
Running water had been guaranteed to about two-thirds of Americans as hundreds of utilities suspended disconnections amid warnings from public health experts that good hygiene, particularly hand-washing, was crucial to curtailing the spread of the virus.
Among being big, bold and beautiful, the Torrey Pine tree could also be the solution when it comes to helping with the world’s water crisis.
“As a child we would go hiking there [Torrey Pines] every single weekend and see how there were giant puddles under the tree.”
The early afternoon sun was pounding the parched soil, and Gus Whyte was pulling on his dust-caked cowboy boots to take me for a drive. We’d just finished lunch—cured ham, a loaf of bread I’d bought on the trip up, chutney pickled by Whyte’s wife, Kelly—at his house in Anabranch South, which isn’t a town but rather a fuzzy cartographic notion in the far west of New South Wales, a seven-hour drive from Melbourne and half as far again from Sydney.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
