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A surprising byproduct of wildfires: Contaminated drinking water

News Feed
Monday, July 29, 2024

Over the weekend, the Park Fire grew to more than 360,000 acres, prompting evacuation orders and warnings around Chico, California in Butte, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama counties. In the days ahead, Cal Fire will seek to contain the blaze to reduce harm to people, structures and the environment. However, months from now when the rains come and the fires are extinguished, a hidden threat could put communities at risk once again.When the mayor of Las Vegas, N.M., issued a warning in 2022 to its 13,000 residents, it wasn’t over a fire — they had recently lived through the state’s largest wildfire in its history: Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak. The dire warning was that the city had 30 days of clean water left. The 2022 monsoon rains covered the Gallinas watershed, where cleared trees from the Santa Fe National Forest and ash-covered grounds made for flash-flood conditions. The storms introduced massive amounts of carbon from burned trees and plant life into the streams and reservoirs. Water treatment couldn’t keep up, making their stores undrinkable.Many drinking water sources at risk from wildfiresAround 60 to 65 percent of the United States’ drinking water comes from forested areas. As fires burn in these areas, they increase the risk of cancer-causing and toxic substances entering water supplies. An estimated 53.3 million U.S. residents who live in areas with significant wildfire risk may face damaged drinking water infrastructure from those flames.Map of at-risk watersheds in the US Western StatesThe new megafire eraRandy Dahlgren, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Davis whose research focused on wildfires and watersheds in California, says that fires’ impact on clean water boils down to the size, intensity and severity of the fire.The 2022 Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak wildfire is among the largest in recorded history in the United States. The fire perimeter stretched across 340,000 acres, with high burn severity in most areas. Thousands were forced to evacuate during the course of the months-long blaze. These megafires — fires greater than 100,000 acres — of the 21st century are increasingly common due in large part to the persistently drier and hotter conditions of forested areas in a warming climate.“I would project that both the size and the severity of wildfires are going to increase,” says Dahlgren. Post-megafire fallout — because of their scale and intensity — is linked to poorer water quality during the following rainy seasons, Dahlgren adds.Megafires burn land at higher temperatures across wider areas than standard wildfires, putting watersheds across the United States at greater risk. Sheila Murphy, a research hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey working on the effects of wildfires on water quality, says burned areas fundamentally alter a watershed’s hydrology. As wildfires burn hotter and consume more trees and structures, water quality will continue to worsen, research suggests.When watersheds burn, the threat starts in the forests, continues to water treatment plants, and can expand to communities and households. To meet these risks, it will take a coalition of informed community members, scientists and city officials to work toward solutions to protect clean water supplies.See how fires alter these systems and introduce contaminants.A table of contents for the next section of the story showing that the piece will cover how the fires impact healthy forests, communities and households.Diagram of a hillside with healthy vegitation and a normal water table level.Diagram of rain filtering through leaves, grass and dirt into the ground.Diagram of an intense wildfire on the previously green hillside.A normal watershed includes land with healthy vegetation and ground cover that help control and protect the water table and groundwater. Typical in the West, legacy mines were revegetated to keep harmful tailings from going downstream.When it rains, a ground cover of leaves, grass and dirt filters a large portion of the water before it soaks into the ground.In the wake of a wildfire, ash from burned vegetation replaces the ground cover.As a hydrophobic material, the ash inhibits the ground from absorbing rain water and replenishing the groundwater. Unable to soak into the ground, the water accumulates, increasing the likelihood of landslides and flash flooding.Legacy mining waste, previously covered and sealed by revegetation, can be exposed. It can flow with runoff into waterways, elevating levels of harmful chemicals and metals such as arsenic and lead.Valley communities near reservoirs, such as the town of Ledoux, N.M., are at risk of flooding after wildfires.After a heavy rainfall, the excessive runoff, combined with ash, debris and sediment, can cause a reservoir to overflow — flooding areas below it.Even if the reservoir doesn’t overflow, the buildup of dissolved organic matter (DOM) lowers the reservoir’s storage capacity and can lead to poorer water quality.Nutrients from DOM increase the likelihood of toxic algae blooms that remove oxygen from the water, triggering organism die-offs.Once oxygen is gone, it can cause heavy metals, like mercury from old mines, to convert to methylmercury. This compound is toxic to wildlife and may cause developmental problems in fetuses and children.Treatment of this water involves chlorination or expensive coagulants. Chlorination has a hard ceiling on removing DOM from water, as disinfectant byproducts like chloroform damage human chromosomes and living cells and increase the risk of cancer and birth defects.When fires burn too closely to communities, entire water systems, including their piping, can be compromised.This happens when high ambient heat unfurls plastic polymers in PVC water lines. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the damaged pipes mix with the water inside.As homes burn, firefighters tap into the water supply to put out flames. The draw on the system can create a vacuum which can pull VOCs into the city’s water mains, shared with other homes.After the fires are out and homes are rebuilt, it can be hard to locate the damaged pipe releasing VOCs into the system. If the contamination is between the city water main and the homes, there’s no way to know without testing every household.Scientists are only beginning to study the effects megafires pose on local ecology.Newsha Ajami, the chief strategic development officer for research in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, studies the multifaceted ways fires impact forest management, water utilities and communities. Ajami says on the state of the science, “We’re destabilizing [water] systems and we don’t even know in what way and how.”A first set of guidelinesIn 2019, a team of enterprising hydrologist-planners realized that there needs to be a handbook for this new reality of wildfire impacts on communities. That fall, volunteers from more than a dozen municipalities wrote the Post-Fire Recovery Playbook, a first-of-its-kind 12-page concise document for water municipalities, land and forest management, and governments to rebuild within 30 days of a fire.Ecologists and researchers working with post-fire effects on water juggle hyperlocal environmental needs with the needs of neighboring communities and the resources of their governments. The authors of the recovery playbook found that measures need to be in place for communities of any size to handle the aftermath of nearby fires. The guide highlights the “gap in guidance in terms of navigating the complexities surrounding post-fire rehabilitation.”Insuring right and rebuilding smarterAjami sees a critical role for insurance companies implementing smart, resilient practices for communities left to cinders. Similar to how health insurance is trying to focus on preventive care to reduce the cost of treating disease, Ajami hopes “at some point we will have a preventive insurance model that would invest in actions people can take from being impacted.”“That’s something we’re starting to touch on now in terms of research,” says Andrew Whelton, a professor at Purdue University working in civil, environmental and ecological engineering. Whelton says that “the insurance industry needs to understand water contamination, water safety, what the alternatives are and how much they cost.” The demands are in understanding costs so they can effectively get ahead of these disasters. “Simply put, insurance companies haven’t anticipated these costs and they haven’t anticipated the cost at the scale they are being hit at.”When the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fire climbed the side of a mountain into a housing development in Boulder Creek, Calif., toxic contamination didn’t spread from the homes back into the water system. That was because the San Lorenzo Valley district utility made sure the valves in that network prevented backflow. Preventive steps like that, Whelton says, go a long way in improving fire resiliency and keeping community drinking water safe. He would know, too: Whelton has become the go-to expert flying out to nearly every megafire that’s burned down towns since 2017, working with communities and municipalities on testing water.Another prevention area is setting up proper lines of communication. Three days after the Maui fires and evacuations began in 2023, the Maui County Department of Water Supply issued an “Unsafe Water Advisory.” All Maui households surveyed in a recent study by Whelton and several other researchers “expressed concerns or confusion about drinking water safety” two weeks after the fire.Communication challenges, like rapidly getting information to water customers after a fire, are what led Whelton and his colleagues to co-author the Wildfire Response Guide for Environmental Public Health Professionals for the National Environmental Health Association. Guides that reduce friction between local and state governments and health professionals assist in risk-monitoring communities post-fire. For protecting water, the guide explicitly highlights where water can be compromised, offering damage-assessment guidance, community messaging on safety risks, and what kinds of testing to prioritize.Further downstream, researchers contend with how to build homes in fire-prone areas to make them more resilient and leach less hazardous waste in the event of a disaster.Erica Fischer, a civil engineer at Oregon State University who spent her PhD studying fire impacts on buildings, saw firsthand the devastation wrought by wildfires in communities like Paradise, Calif., and Louisville, Colo. She’s witnessed conversations move away from just forest management to home-hardening and resiliency-building. Legislation like Oregon’s Senate Bill 762 — which put $220 million into wildfire preparedness of buildings, landscapes and emergency response — Fischer notes, not only puts resources into mapping wildfire risk after the 2020 Oregon fires, but also provides financial assistance for the socially vulnerable in the rural communities at risk.Other legislation is also being advanced. The EMBER act, a bipartisan bill introduced in June by Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), aims to modernize national wildfire policies, including by updating recovery guidance on drinking water toxicity resulting from wildfires.With practices like this in place across wildfire risk areas, the likelihood of a watershed weathering subsequent high rains improves. Dahlgren hits on the adage: “Dilution is the solution to pollution.” If there are backups in place, diluting at least the DOM water can provide safe drinking water downstream.Planning for a future with wildfiresMeanwhile in Boulder, Colo., they are divining the future of fires. Kate Dunlap, a Post-Fire Recovery Playbook co-author and manager of Boulder’s Drinking Water Quality program, applies machine-learning algorithms to identify where to place resources for disaster preparedness. One model simulated 10,000 burns in the watershed according to local topography, vegetation and geology. The results allow Dunlap’s team to understand how much risk there is, where disasters can come from and how much it’ll cost to prevent or treat them.These forecasts help cities predict how much sediment could enter reservoirs. Knowing where hazardous debris might come from allows the government to prioritize stabilizing at-risk forested areas while keeping costs low.The science is trying to keep pace with an ever longer and more frequent fire season. Researchers consulted for this story are studying fires from 2021 and 2022, as well as conditions generated by these newer, larger fires that burn in regions geographically, vegetation-wise and community-wise different from where previous fires burned. Additional research is critical to understand how this global risk impacts communities at a local level.Dunlap sees a lot more urgency here in her field. In eight years on the job, it’s only since 2020 that she’s witnessed increased funding sources at the state and federal level for forest health projects. The general awareness shift she’s seen is that “wildfires are real and we’re not really experiencing these sort of natural fires anymore. They’re very severe.”The community of Las Vegas, N.M., is preparing for the next big fire by strengthening their water supplies along the Gallinas River, both upstream by the wildfire-prone regions and downstream at the household level. Johanna Blake, a U.S. Geological Survey researcher at the New Mexico Water Science Center, sent The Washington Post photos of the rocky barriers — gabions — that now stretch along the river bed. After the rainy season in 2022, she could smell the collected ash that got stopped before entering the river there.About the storyThe wildfire risk to watersheds were calculated from the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest to Faucet data. A watershed was categorized as “Great risk” if 70% or more of its total acres had a “high or very high wildfire hazard potential.”The number of surface drinking water consumers for each watershed is based on late 2018/early 2019 population estimates.Only watersheds that were entirely contained within state boundaries were included in the calculation of residents at risk of wildfire water contamination in Washington and California. Watersheds that intersected with state lines were not included in the calculation to avoid double counting.Janice Kai Chen contributed to this report.

While a wildfire might directly impact a few hundred residents, its secondary impacts to the clean water supply could affect thousands.

Over the weekend, the Park Fire grew to more than 360,000 acres, prompting evacuation orders and warnings around Chico, California in Butte, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama counties. In the days ahead, Cal Fire will seek to contain the blaze to reduce harm to people, structures and the environment. However, months from now when the rains come and the fires are extinguished, a hidden threat could put communities at risk once again.

When the mayor of Las Vegas, N.M., issued a warning in 2022 to its 13,000 residents, it wasn’t over a fire — they had recently lived through the state’s largest wildfire in its history: Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak. The dire warning was that the city had 30 days of clean water left. The 2022 monsoon rains covered the Gallinas watershed, where cleared trees from the Santa Fe National Forest and ash-covered grounds made for flash-flood conditions. The storms introduced massive amounts of carbon from burned trees and plant life into the streams and reservoirs. Water treatment couldn’t keep up, making their stores undrinkable.

Many drinking water sources at risk from wildfires

Around 60 to 65 percent of the United States’ drinking water comes from forested areas. As fires burn in these areas, they increase the risk of cancer-causing and toxic substances entering water supplies. An estimated 53.3 million U.S. residents who live in areas with significant wildfire risk may face damaged drinking water infrastructure from those flames.

Map of at-risk watersheds in the US Western States

The new megafire era

Randy Dahlgren, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Davis whose research focused on wildfires and watersheds in California, says that fires’ impact on clean water boils down to the size, intensity and severity of the fire.

The 2022 Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak wildfire is among the largest in recorded history in the United States. The fire perimeter stretched across 340,000 acres, with high burn severity in most areas. Thousands were forced to evacuate during the course of the months-long blaze. These megafires — fires greater than 100,000 acres — of the 21st century are increasingly common due in large part to the persistently drier and hotter conditions of forested areas in a warming climate.

“I would project that both the size and the severity of wildfires are going to increase,” says Dahlgren. Post-megafire fallout — because of their scale and intensity — is linked to poorer water quality during the following rainy seasons, Dahlgren adds.

Megafires burn land at higher temperatures across wider areas than standard wildfires, putting watersheds across the United States at greater risk. Sheila Murphy, a research hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey working on the effects of wildfires on water quality, says burned areas fundamentally alter a watershed’s hydrology. As wildfires burn hotter and consume more trees and structures, water quality will continue to worsen, research suggests.

When watersheds burn, the threat starts in the forests, continues to water treatment plants, and can expand to communities and households. To meet these risks, it will take a coalition of informed community members, scientists and city officials to work toward solutions to protect clean water supplies.

See how fires alter these systems and introduce contaminants.

A table of contents for the next section of the story showing that the piece will cover how the fires impact healthy forests, communities and households.

Diagram of a hillside with healthy vegitation and a normal water table level.

Diagram of rain filtering through leaves, grass and dirt into the ground.

Diagram of an intense wildfire on the previously green hillside.

A normal watershed includes land with healthy vegetation and ground cover that help control and protect the water table and groundwater. Typical in the West, legacy mines were revegetated to keep harmful tailings from going downstream.

When it rains, a ground cover of leaves, grass and dirt filters a large portion of the water before it soaks into the ground.

In the wake of a wildfire, ash from burned vegetation replaces the ground cover.

As a hydrophobic material, the ash inhibits the ground from absorbing rain water and replenishing the groundwater. Unable to soak into the ground, the water accumulates, increasing the likelihood of landslides and flash flooding.

Legacy mining waste, previously covered and sealed by revegetation, can be exposed. It can flow with runoff into waterways, elevating levels of harmful chemicals and metals such as arsenic and lead.

Valley communities near reservoirs, such as the town of Ledoux, N.M., are at risk of flooding after wildfires.

After a heavy rainfall, the excessive runoff, combined with ash, debris and sediment, can cause a reservoir to overflow — flooding areas below it.

Even if the reservoir doesn’t overflow, the buildup of dissolved organic matter (DOM) lowers the reservoir’s storage capacity and can lead to poorer water quality.

Nutrients from DOM increase the likelihood of toxic algae blooms that remove oxygen from the water, triggering organism die-offs.

Once oxygen is gone, it can cause heavy metals, like mercury from old mines, to convert to methylmercury. This compound is toxic to wildlife and may cause developmental problems in fetuses and children.

Treatment of this water involves chlorination or expensive coagulants. Chlorination has a hard ceiling on removing DOM from water, as disinfectant byproducts like chloroform damage human chromosomes and living cells and increase the risk of cancer and birth defects.

When fires burn too closely to communities, entire water systems, including their piping, can be compromised.

This happens when high ambient heat unfurls plastic polymers in PVC water lines. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the damaged pipes mix with the water inside.

As homes burn, firefighters tap into the water supply to put out flames. The draw on the system can create a vacuum which can pull VOCs into the city’s water mains, shared with other homes.

After the fires are out and homes are rebuilt, it can be hard to locate the damaged pipe releasing VOCs into the system. If the contamination is between the city water main and the homes, there’s no way to know without testing every household.

Scientists are only beginning to study the effects megafires pose on local ecology.

Newsha Ajami, the chief strategic development officer for research in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, studies the multifaceted ways fires impact forest management, water utilities and communities. Ajami says on the state of the science, “We’re destabilizing [water] systems and we don’t even know in what way and how.”

A first set of guidelines

In 2019, a team of enterprising hydrologist-planners realized that there needs to be a handbook for this new reality of wildfire impacts on communities. That fall, volunteers from more than a dozen municipalities wrote the Post-Fire Recovery Playbook, a first-of-its-kind 12-page concise document for water municipalities, land and forest management, and governments to rebuild within 30 days of a fire.

Ecologists and researchers working with post-fire effects on water juggle hyperlocal environmental needs with the needs of neighboring communities and the resources of their governments. The authors of the recovery playbook found that measures need to be in place for communities of any size to handle the aftermath of nearby fires. The guide highlights the “gap in guidance in terms of navigating the complexities surrounding post-fire rehabilitation.”

Insuring right and rebuilding smarter

Ajami sees a critical role for insurance companies implementing smart, resilient practices for communities left to cinders. Similar to how health insurance is trying to focus on preventive care to reduce the cost of treating disease, Ajami hopes “at some point we will have a preventive insurance model that would invest in actions people can take from being impacted.”

“That’s something we’re starting to touch on now in terms of research,” says Andrew Whelton, a professor at Purdue University working in civil, environmental and ecological engineering. Whelton says that “the insurance industry needs to understand water contamination, water safety, what the alternatives are and how much they cost.” The demands are in understanding costs so they can effectively get ahead of these disasters. “Simply put, insurance companies haven’t anticipated these costs and they haven’t anticipated the cost at the scale they are being hit at.”

When the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fire climbed the side of a mountain into a housing development in Boulder Creek, Calif., toxic contamination didn’t spread from the homes back into the water system. That was because the San Lorenzo Valley district utility made sure the valves in that network prevented backflow. Preventive steps like that, Whelton says, go a long way in improving fire resiliency and keeping community drinking water safe. He would know, too: Whelton has become the go-to expert flying out to nearly every megafire that’s burned down towns since 2017, working with communities and municipalities on testing water.

Another prevention area is setting up proper lines of communication. Three days after the Maui fires and evacuations began in 2023, the Maui County Department of Water Supply issued an “Unsafe Water Advisory.” All Maui households surveyed in a recent study by Whelton and several other researchers “expressed concerns or confusion about drinking water safety” two weeks after the fire.

Communication challenges, like rapidly getting information to water customers after a fire, are what led Whelton and his colleagues to co-author the Wildfire Response Guide for Environmental Public Health Professionals for the National Environmental Health Association. Guides that reduce friction between local and state governments and health professionals assist in risk-monitoring communities post-fire. For protecting water, the guide explicitly highlights where water can be compromised, offering damage-assessment guidance, community messaging on safety risks, and what kinds of testing to prioritize.

Further downstream, researchers contend with how to build homes in fire-prone areas to make them more resilient and leach less hazardous waste in the event of a disaster.

Erica Fischer, a civil engineer at Oregon State University who spent her PhD studying fire impacts on buildings, saw firsthand the devastation wrought by wildfires in communities like Paradise, Calif., and Louisville, Colo. She’s witnessed conversations move away from just forest management to home-hardening and resiliency-building. Legislation like Oregon’s Senate Bill 762 — which put $220 million into wildfire preparedness of buildings, landscapes and emergency response Fischer notes, not only puts resources into mapping wildfire risk after the 2020 Oregon fires, but also provides financial assistance for the socially vulnerable in the rural communities at risk.

Other legislation is also being advanced. The EMBER act, a bipartisan bill introduced in June by Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), aims to modernize national wildfire policies, including by updating recovery guidance on drinking water toxicity resulting from wildfires.

With practices like this in place across wildfire risk areas, the likelihood of a watershed weathering subsequent high rains improves. Dahlgren hits on the adage: “Dilution is the solution to pollution.” If there are backups in place, diluting at least the DOM water can provide safe drinking water downstream.

Planning for a future with wildfires

Meanwhile in Boulder, Colo., they are divining the future of fires. Kate Dunlap, a Post-Fire Recovery Playbook co-author and manager of Boulder’s Drinking Water Quality program, applies machine-learning algorithms to identify where to place resources for disaster preparedness. One model simulated 10,000 burns in the watershed according to local topography, vegetation and geology. The results allow Dunlap’s team to understand how much risk there is, where disasters can come from and how much it’ll cost to prevent or treat them.

These forecasts help cities predict how much sediment could enter reservoirs. Knowing where hazardous debris might come from allows the government to prioritize stabilizing at-risk forested areas while keeping costs low.

The science is trying to keep pace with an ever longer and more frequent fire season. Researchers consulted for this story are studying fires from 2021 and 2022, as well as conditions generated by these newer, larger fires that burn in regions geographically, vegetation-wise and community-wise different from where previous fires burned. Additional research is critical to understand how this global risk impacts communities at a local level.

Dunlap sees a lot more urgency here in her field. In eight years on the job, it’s only since 2020 that she’s witnessed increased funding sources at the state and federal level for forest health projects. The general awareness shift she’s seen is that “wildfires are real and we’re not really experiencing these sort of natural fires anymore. They’re very severe.”

The community of Las Vegas, N.M., is preparing for the next big fire by strengthening their water supplies along the Gallinas River, both upstream by the wildfire-prone regions and downstream at the household level. Johanna Blake, a U.S. Geological Survey researcher at the New Mexico Water Science Center, sent The Washington Post photos of the rocky barriers — gabions — that now stretch along the river bed. After the rainy season in 2022, she could smell the collected ash that got stopped before entering the river there.

About the story

The wildfire risk to watersheds were calculated from the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest to Faucet data. A watershed was categorized as “Great risk” if 70% or more of its total acres had a “high or very high wildfire hazard potential.”

The number of surface drinking water consumers for each watershed is based on late 2018/early 2019 population estimates.

Only watersheds that were entirely contained within state boundaries were included in the calculation of residents at risk of wildfire water contamination in Washington and California. Watersheds that intersected with state lines were not included in the calculation to avoid double counting.

Janice Kai Chen contributed to this report.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Toxic Pfas above proposed safety limits in almost all English waters tested

Exclusive: 110 of 117 bodies of water tested by Environment Agency would fail standards, with levels in fish 322 times the planned limitNearly all rivers, lakes and ponds in England tested for a range of Pfas, known as “forever chemicals”, exceed proposed new safety limits and 85% contain levels at least five times higher, analysis of official data reveals.Out of 117 water bodies tested by the Environment Agency for multiple types of Pfas, 110 would fail the safety standard, according to analysis by Wildlife and Countryside Link and the Rivers Trust. Continue reading...

Nearly all rivers, lakes and ponds in England tested for a range of Pfas, known as “forever chemicals”, exceed proposed new safety limits and 85% contain levels at least five times higher, analysis of official data reveals.Out of 117 water bodies tested by the Environment Agency for multiple types of Pfas, 110 would fail the safety standard, according to analysis by Wildlife and Countryside Link and the Rivers Trust.They also found levels of Pfos – a banned carcinogenic Pfas – in fish were on average 322 times higher than planned limits for wildlife. If just one portion of such freshwater fish was eaten each month this would exceed the safe threshold of Pfos for people to consume over a year, according to the NGOs.Pfas, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of thousands of human-made chemicals used in industrial processes and products such as non-stick pans, clothing and firefighting foams. They do not break down in the environment and some are linked to diseases, including cancers and hormone disruption.Pfas pollution is widespread, prompting the EU to propose a new water quality standard that limits the combined toxicity of 24 Pfas to 4.4 nanograms per litre of water, calculated as PFOA-equivalents – a method that weights each substance according to its toxicity relative to PFOA, a particularly hazardous and well-studied carcinogen that is now banned.The EU is also planning to regulate about 10,000 Pfas as one class as there are too many to assess on a case-by-case basis and because none break down in the environment, but the UK has no plans to follow suit.Last week, environment groups, led by the Marine Conservation Society, wrote to ministers, urging a ban on all Pfas in consumer products and a timeline for phasing them out in all other uses. Now, public health and nature groups have joined forces to propose urgent measures to rein in pollution.“Scientists continue to identify Pfas as one of the biggest threats of our time, yet the UK is falling behind other countries in restricting them,” said Hannah Evans of the environmental charity Fidra. “Every day of inaction locks in decades of pollution and environmental harm … we’re asking the UK government to turn off the tap of these persistent forever chemicals.”They say the UK should align with the EU’s group-based Pfas restrictions and ban the substances in food packaging, clothing, cosmetics, toys and firefighting foams, following examples from Denmark, France and the EU. They want better monitoring, tougher water and soil standards and to make polluters cover the cost of Pfas clean-up.Emma Adler, the director of impact at Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “Pfas are linked to an explosion of impacts for wildlife and public health, from cancers to immune issues. These new figures underline just how widespread Pfas pollution is and that Pfas regulation must be a much clearer priority in government missions to clean up UK rivers and improve the nation’s health.”Thalie Martini, the chief executive officer at Breast Cancer UK, said: “Evidence points to the potential for some Pfas to be related to health issues, including increasing breast cancer risk … millions of families affected by this disease will want the government to do everything they can to deliver tougher Pfas rules to protect our health.”Last year, 59 Pfas experts urged the government to follow the science and regulate all Pfas as a single class, warning their extreme persistence – regardless of toxicity – posed a serious environmental threat.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion“Countries like France and Denmark, the EU as a whole and many US states have taken strong action against Pfas pollution,” said Dr Francesca Ginley from the Marine Conservation Society. “The time is now for the UK to take a stand and show the leadership we need on Pfas pollution from source to sea.”Dr Shubhi Sharma of the charity Chem Trust said: “Too often with hazardous chemicals the world has ignored early warnings of harm and learned lessons far too late. Costs to tackle Pfas in the environment and address health impacts have a multi-billion pound economic price tag … the government must not delay.”An Environment Agency spokesperson said the science on Pfas was moving quickly and that it was running a multi-year programme to improve understanding of Pfas pollution sources in England. They added: “We are screening sites to identify potential sources of Pfas pollution and prioritise further investigations, whilst assessing how additional control measures could reduce the risks of Pfas in the environment.”A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “The government is committed to protecting human health and the environment from the risks posed by Pfas. That’s why we are working at pace together with regulators to assess levels of Pfas in the environment, their sources and potential risks to inform our approach to policy and regulation.”

Breaking Down the Force of Water in the Texas Floods

Flash floods last week in Texas caused the Guadalupe River to rise dramatically, reaching three stories high in just two hours

Over just two hours, the Guadalupe River at Comfort, Texas, rose from hip-height to three stories tall, sending water weighing as much as the Empire State building downstream roughly every minute it remained at its crest.Comfort offers a good lens to consider the terrible force of a flash flood’s wall of water because it’s downstream of where the river’s rain-engorged branches met. The crest was among the highest ever recorded at the spot — flash flooding that appears so fast it can “warp our brains,” said James Doss-Gollin, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University.The Texas flood smashed through buildings, carried away cars and ripped sturdy trees out by the roots, dropping the debris in twisted piles when the water finally ebbed. It killed more than 100 people, prompted scores of rescues and left dozens of others missing. The deaths were concentrated upriver in Kerr County, an area that includes Camp Mystic, the devastated girls' camp, where the water hit early and with little notice.Water is capable of such destruction because it is heavy and can move fast. Just one cubic foot of water — imagine a box a bit larger than the size of a basketball — weighs about 62 pounds (28 kilograms). When the river rose to its peak at Comfort, 177,000 cubic feet — or 11 million pounds (5 million kilograms) of water — flowed by every second.“When you have that little lead time ... that means you can’t wait until the water level starts to rise,” Doss-Gollin said. “You need to take proactive measures to get people to safety.” Water as heavy as a jumbo jet A small amount of water — less than many might think — can sweep away people, cars and homes. Six inches (15.2 centimeters) is enough to knock people off their feet. A couple of feet of fast-moving water can take away an SUV or truck, and even less can move cars.“Suppose you are in a normal car, a normal sedan, and a semitrailer comes and pushes you at the back of the car. That’s the kind of force you’re talking about,” said Venkataraman Lakshmi, a University of Virginia professor and president of the hydrology section of the American Geophysical Union.And at Comfort, it took just over 15 minutes for so much water to arrive that not only could it float away a large pickup truck, but structures were in danger — water as heavy as a jumbo jet moved by every second.At that point, “We are past vehicles, homes and things can start being affected,” said Daniel Henz, flood warning program manager at the flood control district of Maricopa County, Arizona, an area that gets dangerous scary flash floods.The water not only pushes objects but floats them, and that can actually be scarier. The feeling of being pushed is felt immediately, letting a person know they are in danger. Upward force may not be felt until it is overwhelming, according to Upmanu Lall, a water expert at Arizona State University and Columbia University.“The buoyancy happens — it’s like a yes, no situation. If the water reaches a certain depth and it has some velocity, you’re going to get knocked off (your feet) and floating simultaneously,” he said. The mechanics of a flash flood The landscape created the conditions for what some witnesses described as a fast-moving wall of water. Lots of limestone covered by a thin layer of soil in hilly country meant that when rain fell, it ran quickly downhill with little of it absorbed by the ground, according to S. Jeffress Williams, senior scientist emeritus with the U.S. Geological Survey.A flash flood generally starts with an initial lead wave and then builds as rain rushes over the landscape and into the river basin. It may rise quickly, but the water still takes some time to converge. The water crumpled cars into piles, twisted steel and knocked trees down as if they were strands of grass. Images captured the chaos and randomness of the water’s violence.And then, not as fast as it rose, but still quickly, the river receded.Five hours after its crest at Comfort, it had already dropped 10 feet (3 meters), revealing its damage in retreat. A couple of days after it started to rise, a person could stand with their head above the river again.“Everything just can happen, very, very quickly,” Henz said.Associated Press writer Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed.The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environmentCopyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - June 2025

South West Water allowed to invest £24m rather than pay £19m fine

Campaigners say Ofwat ‘subservient to industry and its rampaging pursuit of profit’ after illegal sewage dischargesSouth West Water has agreed to pay a £24m penalty for illegal sewage discharges into the environment from its treatment works.The regulator for the water and wastewater sector in England and Wales, Ofwat, says the company, which has 1.8 million customers in Cornwall, Devon, the Isles of Scilly and parts of Dorset and Somerset, is being penalised for dumping sewage in breach of its legal permit conditions. Continue reading...

South West Water has agreed to pay a £24m penalty for illegal sewage discharges into the environment from its treatment works.The regulator for the water and wastewater sector in England and Wales, Ofwat, says the company, which has 1.8 million customers in Cornwall, Devon, the Isles of Scilly and parts of Dorset and Somerset, is being sanctioned for dumping sewage in breach of its legal permit conditions.But there was anger over revelations on Thursday that the regulator had not imposed a direct fine on the company.South West Water put forward the suggestion that it would invest £20m to reduce sewage discharges at key storm overflows, spend £2m to tackle sewer misuse and misconnections, and another £2m to support local environment groups. This was accepted by Ofwat rather than imposing a fine of £19m.But Rob Abrams, the campaigns manager at Surfers Against Sewage, said allowing water companies to choose their own penalty was farcical.He said the situation “illustrates a water industry model that’s broken beyond repair, with government and regulators subservient to industry and its rampaging pursuit of profit, at any cost”.Ofwat said it had chosen this route rather than imposing a fine because it was satisfied that the company would carry out the work required to bring its infrastructure back into legal operation.“We have … concluded that it would be appropriate to accept the undertakings in lieu of the financial penalty we would otherwise impose in this case (£19m, 6.5% of its relevant turnover),” Ofwat said.The regulator carried out a two-year investigation into the company that found it had failed to upgrade its treatment works to prevent sewage discharges into the environment, failed to properly deal with the content of its sewers and failed to put in the resources to monitor its treatment works properly.The penalty is the latest in an ongoing investigation by Ofwat into several water companies into widespread illegal sewage dumping across the network from thousands of treatment plants.Penalties totalling more than £160m have already been imposed against Yorkshire Water, Thames Water and Northumbrian Water for widespread illegal sewage dumping from their treatment works.Lynn Parker, the senior director for enforcement at Ofwat, said the regulator had secured the £24m package and a commitment to put things right from the company.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionBut Abrams said it amounted to a cynical PR exercise and an abdication of responsibility by Ofwat.“There is no transparency about how the money will be spent or whether it’s even enough,” he said.“Of the £4m pledged for environmental initiatives and local groups, we’ve been given no clarity on who will benefit or why.”The public and other stakeholders can make representations about the size of the penalty before it is finalised.

Oregon groundwater protection bill passes despite criticism that it’s too weak

Gov. Tina Kotek backed the bill to modernize Oregon’s failed groundwater pollution laws.

Legislators have just passed a groundwater protection bill that many nonprofit groups working on groundwater contamination said was too watered down to make a real difference. Gov. Tina Kotek backed the bill to modernize Oregon’s failed groundwater pollution laws. Kotek has been active in trying to speed up response to the three-decades-old groundwater contamination crisis in the Lower Umatilla Basin, where many residents with nitrate-contaminated domestic wells must rely on bottled drinking water. Until 2022, many people in the region had no idea they had been drinking contaminated water for years. Some still don’t know it because the state has yet to test all the affected wells. A state analysis also has shown that nitrate pollution in the area has worsened significantly over the past decade. Though the state has been testing wells and conducting public awareness campaigns, critics have accused the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Department of Agriculture and Water Resources Department of not doing enough to crack down on the pollution sources. Much of the nitrate contamination comes from fertilizer used by large farms, animal manure from local industrial dairies and feedlots and wastewater from food processing plants that are constantly applied to farm fields. Early versions of the bill laid out specific actions that state agencies would have to take once groundwater pollution had reached the level of a serious public health threat. But many of those actions were stripped out of the bill, leading environmental and social justice nonprofits to pull their support because they deemed the bill too weak to make a difference. Oregon Rural Action, the eastern Oregon nonprofit that has been instrumental in testing domestic wells and pushing the state to do more testing and to limit nitrate pollution, said industry groups representing polluters put pressure on the governor’s office, leading to major changes in the bill’s language. “The version passed on Friday no longer includes the tools, resources, and Legislative directives needed for agencies to exercise their authority to protect Oregon’s groundwater and enforce the law,”the group’s executive director, Kristin Anderson Ostrom, said in a statement. The governor’s office declined to comment.Kotek in January issued an emergency order allowing the Port of Morrow to again violate its water pollution permit and over-apply nitrogen contaminated water onto farmland. The port, which handles billions of gallons of nitrogen-rich water every year, said that it would have to pause operations and lay off workers if not for the emergency permit. In addition to the Lower Umatilla Basin, Oregon has designated two other areas – in northern Malheur County and the southern Willamette Valley – where elevated nitrate concentrations in groundwater pose a human health risk. Each one has an action plan to reduce nitrate concentrations in groundwater. Research has linked high nitrate consumption over long periods to stomach, bladder and intestinal cancers, miscarriages and thyroid issues. It is especially dangerous to infants who can quickly develop “blue baby syndrome,” a fatal illness.— Gosia Wozniacka covers environmental justice, climate change, the clean energy transition and other environmental issues. Reach her at gwozniacka@oregonian.com or 971-421-3154.

A rare glimpse inside the mountain tunnel that carries water to Southern California

In the 1930s, workers bored a 13-mile tunnel beneath Mt. San Jacinto. Here's a look inside the engineering feat that carries Colorado River water to Southern California.

Thousands of feet below the snowy summit of Mt. San Jacinto, a formidable feat of engineering and grit makes life as we know it in Southern California possible. The 13-mile-long San Jacinto Tunnel was bored through the mountain in the 1930s by a crew of about 1,200 men who worked day and night for six years, blasting rock and digging with machinery. Completed in 1939, the tunnel was a cornerstone in the construction of the 242-mile Colorado River Aqueduct. It enabled the delivery of as much as 1 billion gallons of water per day.The tunnel is usually off-limits when it is filled and coursing with a massive stream of Colorado River water. But recently, while it was shut down for annual maintenance, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California opened the west end of the passage to give The Times and others a rare look inside. “It’s an engineering marvel,” said John Bednarski, an assistant general manager of MWD. “It’s pretty awe-inspiring.” The 16-foot-diameter San Jacinto Tunnel runs 13 miles through the mountain. While shut down for maintenance, the tunnel has a constant stream of water entering from the mountain. A group visits the west end of the San Jacinto Tunnel, where the mouth of the water tunnel enters a chamber. He wore a hard hat as he led a group to the gaping, horseshoe-shaped mouth of the tunnel. The passage’s concrete arch faded in the distance to pitch black.The tunnel wasn’t entirely empty. The sound of rushing water echoed from the walls as an ankle-deep stream flowed from the portal and cascaded into a churning pool beneath metal gates. Many in the tour group wore rubber boots as they stood on moist concrete in a chamber faintly lit by filtered sunlight, peering into the dark tunnel. This constant flow comes as groundwater seeps and gushes from springs that run through the heart of the mountain. In places deep in the tunnel, water shoots so forcefully from the floor or the wall that workers have affectionately named these soaking obstacles “the fire hose” and “the car wash.”Standing by the flowing stream, Bednarski called it “leakage water from the mountain itself.”Mt. San Jacinto rises 10,834 feet above sea level, making it the second-highest peak in Southern California after 11,503-foot Mt. San Gorgonio.As the tunnel passes beneath San Jacinto’s flank, as much as 2,500 feet of solid rock lies overhead, pierced only by two vertical ventilation shafts. Snow covers Mt. San Jacinto, as seen from Whitewater, in March. At the base of the mountain, the 13-mile San Jacinto Tunnel starts its journey. The tunnel transports Colorado River water to Southern California’s cities. During maintenance, workers roll through on a tractor equipped with a frame bearing metal bristles that scrape the tunnel walls, cleaning off algae and any growth of invasive mussels. Workers also inspect the tunnel by passing through on an open trailer, scanning for any cracks that require repairs.“It’s like a Disneyland ride,” said Bryan Raymond, an MWD conveyance team manager. “You’re sitting on this trailer, and there’s a bunch of other people on it too, and you’re just cruising through looking at the walls.” Aside from the spraying and trickling water, employee Michael Volpone said he has also heard faint creaking.“If you sit still and listen, you can kind of hear the earth move,” he said. “It’s a little eerie.”Standing at the mouth of the tunnel, the constant babble of cascading water dominates the senses. The air is moist but not musty. Put a hand to the clear flowing water, and it feels warm enough for a swim. On the concrete walls are stained lines that extend into the darkness, marking where the water often reaches when the aqueduct is running full. Many who have worked on the aqueduct say they are impressed by the system’s design and how engineers and workers built such a monumental system with the basic tools and technology available during the Great Depression.Pipelines and tunnelsThe search for a route to bring Colorado River water across the desert to Los Angeles began with the signing of a 1922 agreement that divided water among seven states. After the passage of a $2-million bond measure by Los Angeles voters in 1925, hundreds of surveyors fanned out across the largely roadless Mojave and Sonoran deserts to take measurements and study potential routes.The surveyors traveled mostly on horseback and on foot as they mapped the rugged terrain, enduring grueling days in desert camps where the heat sometimes topped 120 degrees.Planners studied and debated more than 100 potential paths before settling on one in 1931. The route began near Parker, Ariz., and took a curving path through desert valleys, around obstacles and, where there was no better option, through mountains.In one official report, a manager wrote that “to bore straight through the mountains is very expensive and to pump over them is likewise costly.” He said the planners carefully weighed these factors as they decided on a solution that would deliver water at the lowest cost. VIDEO | 02:45 A visit to the giant tunnel that brings Colorado River water to Southern California Share via Those in charge of the Metropolitan Water District, which had been created in 1928 to lead the effort, were focused on delivering water to 13 participating cities, including Los Angeles, Burbank and Anaheim. William Mulholland, Los Angeles’ chief water engineer, had led an early scouting party to map possible routes from the Colorado River to Southern California’s cities in 1923, a decade after he celebrated the completion of the 233-mile aqueduct from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles with the triumphant words, “There it is. Take it.”The aqueduct’s design matched the audaciousness of the giant dams the federal government was starting to build along the Colorado — Hoover Dam (originally called Boulder Dam) and Parker Dam, which formed the reservoir where the aqueduct would begin its journey.Five pumping plants would be built to lift water more than 1,600 feet along the route across the desert. Between those points, water would run by gravity through open canals, buried pipelines and 29 separate tunnels stretching 92 miles — the longest of which was a series of nine tunnels running 33.7 miles through hills bordering the Coachella Valley.To make it possible, voters in the district’s 13 cities overwhelmingly approved a $220-million bond in 1931, the equivalent of a $4.5-billion investment today, which enabled the hiring of 35,000 workers. Crews set up camps, excavated canals and began to blast open shafts through the desert’s rocky spines to make way for water.In 1933, workers started tearing into the San Jacinto Mountains at several locations, from the east and the west, as well as excavating shafts from above. Black-and-white photographs and films showed miners in hard hats and soiled uniforms as they stood smoking cigarettes, climbing into open rail cars and running machinery that scooped and loaded piles of rocks.Crews on another hulking piece of equipment, called a jumbo, used compressed-air drills to bore dozens of holes, which were packed with blasting power and detonated to pierce the rock. (Courtesy of Metropolitan Water District of Southern California) The work progressed slowly, growing complicated when the miners struck underground streams, which sent water gushing in.According to a 1991 history of the MWD titled “A Water Odyssey,” one flood in 1934 disabled two of three pumps that had been brought in to clear the tunnel. In another sudden flood, an engineer recalled that “the water came in with a big, mad rush and filled the shaft to the top. Miners scrambled up the 800-foot ladder to the surface, and the last man out made it with water swirling around his waist.”Death and delaysAccording to the MWD’s records, 13 workers died during the tunnel’s construction, including men who were struck by falling rocks, run over by equipment or electrocuted with a wire on one of the mining trolleys that rolled on railroad tracks. The Metropolitan Water District had originally hired Wenzel & Henoch Construction Co. to build the tunnel. But after less than two years, only about two miles of the tunnel had been excavated, and the contractor was fired by MWD general manager Frank Elwin “F.E.” Weymouth, who assigned the district’s engineers and workers to complete the project.Construction was delayed again in 1937 when workers went on strike for six weeks. But in 1939, the last wall of rock tumbled down, uniting the east and west tunnels, and the tunnel was finished. John Bednarski, assistant general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, stands in a water tunnel near the end point of the larger San Jacinto Tunnel, which carries Colorado River water. The total cost was $23.5 million. But there also were other costs. As the construction work drained water, many nearby springs used by the Native Soboba people stopped flowing. The drying of springs and creeks left the tribe’s members without water and starved their farms, which led to decades of litigation by the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians and eventually a legal settlement in 2008 that resolved the tribe’s water rights claims.The ‘magic touch’ of waterBy the time the tunnel was completed, the Metropolitan Water District had released a 20-minute film that was shown in movie theaters and schools celebrating its conquest of the Colorado River and the desert. It called Mt. San Jacinto the “tallest and most forbidding barrier.”In a rich baritone, the narrator declared Southern California “a new empire made possible by the magic touch of water.” “Water required to support this growth and wealth could not be obtained from the local rainfall in this land of sunshine,” the narrator said as the camera showed newly built homes and streets filled with cars and buses. “The people therefore realized that a new and dependable water supply must be provided, and this new water supply has been found on the lofty western slopes of the Rocky Mountains, a wonderland of beauty, clad by nature in a white mantle of snow.”Water began to flow through the aqueduct in 1939 as the pumping plants were tested. At the Julian Hinds Pumping Plant, near the aqueduct’s halfway point, water was lifted 441 feet, surging through three pipelines up a desert mountain. March 2012 image of the 10-foot-diameter delivery lines carrying water 441 feet uphill from the Julian Hinds Pumping Plant. (Los Angeles Times) From there, the water flowed by gravity, moving at 3-6 mph as it traveled through pipelines, siphons and tunnels. It entered the San Jacinto Tunnel in Cabazon, passed under the mountain and emerged near the city of San Jacinto, then continued in pipelines to Lake Mathews reservoir in Riverside County. In 1941, Colorado River water started flowing to Pasadena, Beverly Hills, Compton and other cities. Within six years, another pipeline was built to transport water from the aqueduct south to San Diego.The influx of water fueled Southern California’s rapid growth during and after World War II.Over decades, the dams and increased diversions also took an environmental toll, drying up much of the once-vast wetlands in Mexico’s Colorado River Delta. John Bednarski, assistant general manager of the Metropolitan Water District, walks in a water tunnel near the end point of the larger San Jacinto Tunnel. An impressive designToday, 19 million people depend on water delivered by the MWD, which also imports supplies from Northern California through the aqueducts and pipelines of the State Water Project.In recent decades, the agency has continued boring tunnels where needed to move water. A $1.2-billion, 44-mile-long conveyance system called the Inland Feeder, completed in 2009, involved boring eight miles of tunnels through the San Bernardino Mountains and another 7.9-mile tunnel under the Badlands in Riverside County.The system enabled the district to increase its capacity and store more water during wet years in Diamond Valley Lake, Southern California’s largest reservoir, which can hold about 260 billion gallons of water. “Sometimes tunneling is actually the most effective way to get from point A to point B,” said Deven Upadhyay, the MWD’s general manager.Speaking hypothetically, Upadhyay said, if engineers had another shot at designing and building the aqueduct now using modern technology, it’s hard to say if they would end up choosing the same route through Mt. San Jacinto or a different route around it. But the focus on minimizing cost might yield a similar route, he said.“Even to this day, it’s a pretty impressive design,” Upadhyay said.When people drive past on the I-10 in Cabazon, few realize that a key piece of infrastructure lies hidden where the desert meets the base of the mountain. At the tunnel’s exit point near San Jacinto, the only visible signs of the infrastructure are several concrete structures resembling bunkers. When the aqueduct is running, those who enter the facility will hear the rumble of rushing water. The tunnel’s west end was opened to a group of visitors in March, when the district’s managers held an event to name the tunnel in honor of Randy Record, who served on the MWD board for two decades and was chair from 2014 to 2018. Speaking to an audience, Upadhyay reflected on the struggles the region now faces as the Colorado River is sapped by drought and global warming, and he drew a parallel to the challenges the tunnel’s builders overcame in the 1930s. “They found a path,” Upadhyay said. “This incredible engineering feat. And it required strength, courage and really an innovative spirit.” “When we now think about the challenges that we face today, dealing with wild swings in climate and the potential reductions that we might face, sharing dwindling supplies on our river systems with the growing Southwest, it’s going to require the same thing — strength, courage and a spirit of innovation,” he said. A steep steel staircase gives access to a water tunnel near the end point of the larger San Jacinto Tunnel, which carries Colorado River water to Southern California.

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