Now that the calendar has flipped to January 2021, it’s time to say goodbye to the mess of the past year, yes? The baggage from 2020 was discarded, left behind at the station when the clock struck midnight, right? Appealing as that might be, the answer is no. Far from being in the rearview, the upheaval of the last year will set the stage for the next 12 months and beyond.
Some Hopi families don’t have running water. Many others have water tainted with arsenic. Steps toward fixes are finally taking shape.
We need water to cook and wash our bodies and clothes, and especially to drink—without it, we can’t live. Despite this, Wall Street traders are going to start betting on it as a commodity.
Water is joining gold, oil and other commodities traded on Wall Street, highlighting worries that the life-sustaining natural resource may become scarce across more of the world.
Farmers, hedge funds and municipalities alike will be able to hedge against — or bet on — potential water scarcity starting this week, when CME Group Inc. launches contracts linked to the $1.1 billion California spot water market. According to Chicago-based CME, the futures will help water users manage risk and better align supply and demand.
The contracts, a first of their kind in the U.S., were announced in September as heat and wildfires ravaged the U.S. West Coast. They are meant to serve both as a hedge for California’s biggest water consumers against skyrocketing prices and a scarcity gauge for investors worldwide.
A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists outlines wide-reaching environmental impacts affecting the health and economy of San Joaquin Valley communities from extreme heat to water scarcity and pollution.
The report acts as a guide to help community members and advocates address climate change issues and prepare for challenges. Advocates at the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability contributed to the report.
Microsoft plans to address dwindling water resources in its latest environmental pledge. Microsoft made a new commitment to replenish even more water than it uses for its global operations by 2030, making the company “water positive.”
Desalination can be expensive and time consuming due to the complexity of the treatment process, which is why sustainable, energy-efficient desalination is at the forefront of research into developing clean water technologies.
In the arid West, scarce water supplies are growing scarcer. Climate change is shrinking snowpack in river basins throughout the region, leaving the future water supplies for cities, industries and farmers uncertain.
“Water scarcity” is not a term Arizonans like to use; certainly not civic leaders, economic development professionals or water utilities. Those two words can invoke confusion and concerns, sometimes irrational. But, the good news is it shouldn’t.
The basis of “water scarcity” is quite simple. When there is increasing demand for a finite resource that, in turn, has diminishing supply, then ultimately, we all have to deal with scarcity issues. In the case of water, this does not mean your faucet will go dry.
Hopefully, we all remember the pictures from a few years ago: During the last check of the snowpack of the season, where officials should have been walking on snow … they were walking on bare earth.
Measuring snowpack? There was none to speak of. And we had water-use restrictions. Things seemed grim. Then the weather changed, thankfully.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
