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Understanding the impacts of mining on local environments and communities

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Thursday, March 21, 2024

Hydrosocial displacement refers to the idea that resolving water conflict in one area can shift the conflict to a different area. The concept was coined by Scott Odell, a visiting researcher in MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI). As part of ESI’s Program on Mining and the Circular Economy, Odell researches the impacts of extractive industries on local environments and communities, especially in Latin America. He discovered that hydrosocial displacements are often in regions where the mining industry is vying for use of precious water sources that are already stressed due to climate change. Odell is working with John Fernández, ESI director and professor in the Department of Architecture, on a project that is examining the converging impacts of climate change, mining, and agriculture in Chile. The work is funded by a seed grant from MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS). Specifically, the project seeks to answer how the expansion of seawater desalination by the mining industry is affecting local populations, and how climate change and mining affect Andean glaciers and the agricultural communities dependent upon them. By working with communities in mining areas, Odell and Fernández are gaining a sense of the burden that mining minerals needed for the clean energy transition is placing on local populations, and the types of conflicts that arise when water sources become polluted or scarce. This work is of particular importance considering over 100 countries pledged a commitment to the clean energy transition at the recent United Nations climate change conference, known as COP28. Water, humanity’s lifeblood At the March 2023 United Nations (U.N.) Water Conference in New York, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned “water is in deep trouble. We are draining humanity’s lifeblood through vampiric overconsumption and unsustainable use and evaporating it through global heating.” A quarter of the world’s population already faces “extremely high water stress,” according to the World Resources Institute. In an effort to raise awareness of major water-related issues and inspire action for innovative solutions, the U.N. created World Water Day, observed every year on March 22. This year’s theme is “Water for Peace,” underscoring the fact that even though water is a basic human right and intrinsic to every aspect of life, it is increasingly fought over as supplies dwindle due to problems including drought, overuse, or mismanagement.   The “Water for Peace” theme is exemplified in Fernández and Odell’s J-WAFS project, where findings are intended to inform policies to reduce social and environmental harms inflicted on mining communities and their limited water sources. “Despite broad academic engagement with mining and climate change separately, there has been a lack of analysis of the societal implications of the interactions between mining and climate change,” says Odell. “This project is helping to fill the knowledge gap. Results will be summarized in Spanish and English and distributed to interested and relevant parties in Chile, ensuring that the results can be of benefit to those most impacted by these challenges,” he adds. The effects of mining for the clean energy transition Global climate change is understood to be the most pressing environmental issue facing humanity today. Mitigating climate change requires reducing carbon emissions by transitioning away from conventional energy derived from burning fossil fuels, to more sustainable energy sources like solar and wind power. Because copper is an excellent conductor of electricity, it will be a crucial element in the clean energy transition, in which more solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles will be manufactured. “We are going to see a major increase in demand for copper due to the clean energy transition,” says Odell. In 2021, Chile produced 26 percent of the world's copper, more than twice as much as any other country, Odell explains. Much of Chile’s mining is concentrated in and around the Atacama Desert — the world’s driest desert. Unfortunately, mining requires large amounts of water for a variety of processes, including controlling dust at the extraction site, cooling machinery, and processing and transporting ore. Chile is also one of the world’s largest exporters of agricultural products. Farmland is typically situated in the valleys downstream of several mines in the high Andes region, meaning mines get first access to water. This can lead to water conflict between mining operations and agricultural communities. Compounding the problem of mining for greener energy materials to combat climate change, are the very effects of climate change. According to the Chilean government, the country has suffered 13 years of the worst drought in history. While this is detrimental to the mining industry, it is also concerning for those working in agriculture, including the Indigenous Atacameño communities that live closest to the Escondida mine, the largest copper mine in the world. “There was never a lot of water to go around, even before the mine,” Odell says. The addition of Escondida stresses an already strained water system, leaving Atacameño farmers and individuals vulnerable to severe water insecurity. What’s more, waste from mining, known as tailings, includes minerals and chemicals that can contaminate water in nearby communities if not properly handled and stored. Odell says the secure storage of tailings is a high priority in earthquake-prone Chile. “If an earthquake were to hit and damage a tailings dam, it could mean toxic materials flowing downstream and destroying farms and communities,” he says. Chile’s treasured glaciers are another piece of the mining, climate change, and agricultural puzzle. Caroline White-Nockleby, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society, is working with Odell and Fernández on the J-WAFS project and leading the research specifically on glaciers. “These may not be the picturesque bright blue glaciers that you might think of, but they are, nonetheless, an important source of water downstream,” says White-Nockleby. She goes on to explain that there are a few different ways that mines can impact glaciers. In some cases, mining companies have proposed to move or even destroy glaciers to get at the ore beneath. Other impacts include dust from mining that falls on glaciers. White-Nockleby says, “this makes the glaciers a darker color, so, instead of reflecting the sun's rays away, [the glacier] may absorb the heat and melt faster.” This shows that even when not directly intervening with glaciers, mining activities can cause glacial decline, adding to the threat glaciers already face due to climate change. She also notes that “glaciers are an important water storage facility,” describing how, on an annual cycle, glaciers freeze and melt, allowing runoff that downstream agricultural communities can utilize. If glaciers suddenly melt too quickly, flooding of downstream communities can occur. Desalination offers a possible, but imperfect, solution Chile’s extensive coastline makes it uniquely positioned to utilize desalination — the removal of salts from seawater — to address water insecurity. Odell says that “over the last decade or so, there's been billions of dollars of investments in desalination in Chile.” As part of his dissertation work at Clark University, Odell found broad optimism in Chile for solving water issues in the mining industry through desalination. Not only was the mining industry committed to building desalination plants, there was also political support, and support from some community members in highland communities near the mines. Yet, despite the optimism and investment, desalinated water was not replacing the use of continental water. He concluded that “desalination can’t solve water conflict if it doesn't reduce demand for continental water supplies.” However, after publishing those results, Odell learned that new estimates at the national level showed that desalination operations had begun to replace the use of continental water after 2018. In two case studies that he currently focuses on — the Escondida and Los Pelambres copper mines — the mining companies have expanded their desalination objectives in order to reduce extraction from key continental sources. This seems to be due to a variety of factors. For one thing, in 2022, Chile’s water code was reformed to prioritize human water consumption and environmental protection of water during scarcity and in the allocation of future rights. It also shortened the granting of water rights from “in perpetuity” to 30 years. Under this new code, it is possible that the mining industry may have expanded its desalination efforts because it viewed continental water resources as less secure, Odell surmises. As part of the J-WAFS project, Odell has found that recent reactions have been mixed when it comes to the rapid increase in the use of desalination. He spent over two months doing fieldwork in Chile by conducting interviews with members of government, industry, and civil society at the Escondida, Los Pelambres, and Andina mining sites, as well as in Chile’s capital city, Santiago. He has spoken to local and national government officials, leaders of fishing unions, representatives of mining and desalination companies, and farmers. He observed that in the communities where the new desalination plants are being built, there have been concerns from community members as to whether they will get access to the desalinated water, or if it will belong solely to the mines. Interviews at the Escondida and Los Pelambres sites, in which desalination operations are already in place or under construction, indicate acceptance of the presence of desalination plants combined with apprehension about unknown long-term environmental impacts. At a third mining site, Andina, there have been active protests against a desalination project that would supply water to a neighboring mine, Los Bronces. In that community, there has been a blockade of the desalination operation by the fishing federation. “They were blockading that operation for three months because of concerns over what the desalination plant would do to their fishing grounds,” Odell says. And this is where the idea of hydrosocial displacement comes into the picture, he explains. Even though desalination operations are easing tensions with highland agricultural communities, new issues are arising for the communities on the coast. “We can't just look to desalination to solve our problems if it's going to create problems somewhere else” Odell advises. Within the process of hydrosocial displacement, interacting geographical, technical, economic, and political factors constrain the range of responses to address the water conflict. For example, communities that have more political and financial power tend to be better equipped to solve water conflict than less powerful communities. In addition, hydrosocial concerns usually follow the flow of water downstream, from the highlands to coastal regions. Odell says that this raises the need to look at water from a broader perspective. “We tend to address water concerns one by one and that can, in practice, end up being kind of like whack-a-mole,” says Odell. “When we think of the broader hydrological system, water is very much linked, and we need to look across the watershed. We can't just be looking at the specific community affected now, but who else is affected downstream, and will be affected in the long term. If we do solve a water issue by moving it somewhere else, like moving a tailings dam somewhere else, or building a desalination plant, resources are needed in the receiving community to respond to that,” suggests Odell. The company building the desalination plant and the fishing federation ultimately reached an agreement and the desalination operation will be moving forward. But Odell notes, “the protest highlights concern about the impacts of the operation on local livelihoods and environments within the much larger context of industrial pollution in the area.” The power of communities The protest by the fishing federation is one example of communities coming together to have their voices heard. Recent proposals by mining companies that would affect glaciers and other water sources used by agriculture communities have led to other protests that resulted in new agreements to protect local water supplies and the withdrawal of some of the mining proposals. Odell observes that communities have also gone to the courts to raise their concerns. The Atacameño communities, for example, have drawn attention to over-extraction of water resources by the Escondida mine. “Community members are also pursuing education in these topics so that there's not such a power imbalance between mining companies and local communities,” Odell remarks. This demonstrates the power local communities can have to protect continental water resources. The political and social landscape of Chile may also be changing in favor of local communities. Beginning with what is now referred to as the Estallido Social (social outburst) over inequality in 2019, Chile has undergone social upheaval that resulted in voters calling for a new constitution. Gabriel Boric, a progressive candidate, whose top priorities include social and environmental issues, was elected president during this period. These trends have brought major attention to issues of economic inequality, environmental harms of mining, and environmental justice, which is putting pressure on the mining industry to make a case for its operations in the country, and to justify the environmental costs of mining. What happens after the mine dries up? From his fieldwork interviews, Odell has learned that the development of mines within communities can offer benefits. Mining companies typically invest directly in communities through employment, road construction, and sometimes even by building or investing in schools, stadiums, or health clinics. Indirectly, mines can have spillover effects in the economy since miners might support local restaurants, hotels, or stores. But what happens when the mine closes? As one community member Odell interviewed stated: “When the mine is gone, what are we going to have left besides a big hole in the ground?” Odell suggests that a multi-pronged approach should be taken to address the future state of water and mining. First, he says we need to have broader conversations about the nature of our consumption and production at domestic and global scales. “Mining is driven indirectly by our consumption of energy and directly by our consumption of everything from our buildings to devices to cars,” Odell states. “We should be looking for ways to moderate our consumption and consume smarter through both policy and practice so that we don’t solve climate change while creating new environmental harms through mining.” One of the main ways we can do this is by advancing the circular economy by recycling metals already in the system, or even in landfills, to help build our new clean energy infrastructure. Even so, the clean energy transition will still require mining, but according to Odell, that mining can be done better. “Mining companies and government need to do a better job of consulting with communities. We need solid plans and financing for mine closures in place from the beginning of mining operations, so that when the mine dries up, there's the money needed to secure tailings dams and protect the communities who will be there forever,” Odell concludes. Overall, it will take an engaged society — from the mining industry to government officials to individuals — to think critically about the role we each play in our quest for a more sustainable planet, and what that might mean for the most vulnerable populations among us.

Extractive industries threaten water, glaciers, and livelihoods, but new research offers hope.

Hydrosocial displacement refers to the idea that resolving water conflict in one area can shift the conflict to a different area. The concept was coined by Scott Odell, a visiting researcher in MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI). As part of ESI’s Program on Mining and the Circular Economy, Odell researches the impacts of extractive industries on local environments and communities, especially in Latin America. He discovered that hydrosocial displacements are often in regions where the mining industry is vying for use of precious water sources that are already stressed due to climate change.

Odell is working with John Fernández, ESI director and professor in the Department of Architecture, on a project that is examining the converging impacts of climate change, mining, and agriculture in Chile. The work is funded by a seed grant from MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS). Specifically, the project seeks to answer how the expansion of seawater desalination by the mining industry is affecting local populations, and how climate change and mining affect Andean glaciers and the agricultural communities dependent upon them.

By working with communities in mining areas, Odell and Fernández are gaining a sense of the burden that mining minerals needed for the clean energy transition is placing on local populations, and the types of conflicts that arise when water sources become polluted or scarce. This work is of particular importance considering over 100 countries pledged a commitment to the clean energy transition at the recent United Nations climate change conference, known as COP28.

Water, humanity’s lifeblood

At the March 2023 United Nations (U.N.) Water Conference in New York, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned “water is in deep trouble. We are draining humanity’s lifeblood through vampiric overconsumption and unsustainable use and evaporating it through global heating.” A quarter of the world’s population already faces “extremely high water stress,” according to the World Resources Institute. In an effort to raise awareness of major water-related issues and inspire action for innovative solutions, the U.N. created World Water Day, observed every year on March 22. This year’s theme is “Water for Peace,” underscoring the fact that even though water is a basic human right and intrinsic to every aspect of life, it is increasingly fought over as supplies dwindle due to problems including drought, overuse, or mismanagement.  

The “Water for Peace” theme is exemplified in Fernández and Odell’s J-WAFS project, where findings are intended to inform policies to reduce social and environmental harms inflicted on mining communities and their limited water sources.

“Despite broad academic engagement with mining and climate change separately, there has been a lack of analysis of the societal implications of the interactions between mining and climate change,” says Odell. “This project is helping to fill the knowledge gap. Results will be summarized in Spanish and English and distributed to interested and relevant parties in Chile, ensuring that the results can be of benefit to those most impacted by these challenges,” he adds.

The effects of mining for the clean energy transition

Global climate change is understood to be the most pressing environmental issue facing humanity today. Mitigating climate change requires reducing carbon emissions by transitioning away from conventional energy derived from burning fossil fuels, to more sustainable energy sources like solar and wind power. Because copper is an excellent conductor of electricity, it will be a crucial element in the clean energy transition, in which more solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles will be manufactured. “We are going to see a major increase in demand for copper due to the clean energy transition,” says Odell.

In 2021, Chile produced 26 percent of the world's copper, more than twice as much as any other country, Odell explains. Much of Chile’s mining is concentrated in and around the Atacama Desert — the world’s driest desert. Unfortunately, mining requires large amounts of water for a variety of processes, including controlling dust at the extraction site, cooling machinery, and processing and transporting ore.

Chile is also one of the world’s largest exporters of agricultural products. Farmland is typically situated in the valleys downstream of several mines in the high Andes region, meaning mines get first access to water. This can lead to water conflict between mining operations and agricultural communities. Compounding the problem of mining for greener energy materials to combat climate change, are the very effects of climate change. According to the Chilean government, the country has suffered 13 years of the worst drought in history. While this is detrimental to the mining industry, it is also concerning for those working in agriculture, including the Indigenous Atacameño communities that live closest to the Escondida mine, the largest copper mine in the world. “There was never a lot of water to go around, even before the mine,” Odell says. The addition of Escondida stresses an already strained water system, leaving Atacameño farmers and individuals vulnerable to severe water insecurity.

What’s more, waste from mining, known as tailings, includes minerals and chemicals that can contaminate water in nearby communities if not properly handled and stored. Odell says the secure storage of tailings is a high priority in earthquake-prone Chile. “If an earthquake were to hit and damage a tailings dam, it could mean toxic materials flowing downstream and destroying farms and communities,” he says.

Chile’s treasured glaciers are another piece of the mining, climate change, and agricultural puzzle. Caroline White-Nockleby, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society, is working with Odell and Fernández on the J-WAFS project and leading the research specifically on glaciers. “These may not be the picturesque bright blue glaciers that you might think of, but they are, nonetheless, an important source of water downstream,” says White-Nockleby. She goes on to explain that there are a few different ways that mines can impact glaciers.

In some cases, mining companies have proposed to move or even destroy glaciers to get at the ore beneath. Other impacts include dust from mining that falls on glaciers. White-Nockleby says, “this makes the glaciers a darker color, so, instead of reflecting the sun's rays away, [the glacier] may absorb the heat and melt faster.” This shows that even when not directly intervening with glaciers, mining activities can cause glacial decline, adding to the threat glaciers already face due to climate change. She also notes that “glaciers are an important water storage facility,” describing how, on an annual cycle, glaciers freeze and melt, allowing runoff that downstream agricultural communities can utilize. If glaciers suddenly melt too quickly, flooding of downstream communities can occur.

Desalination offers a possible, but imperfect, solution

Chile’s extensive coastline makes it uniquely positioned to utilize desalination — the removal of salts from seawater — to address water insecurity. Odell says that “over the last decade or so, there's been billions of dollars of investments in desalination in Chile.”

As part of his dissertation work at Clark University, Odell found broad optimism in Chile for solving water issues in the mining industry through desalination. Not only was the mining industry committed to building desalination plants, there was also political support, and support from some community members in highland communities near the mines. Yet, despite the optimism and investment, desalinated water was not replacing the use of continental water. He concluded that “desalination can’t solve water conflict if it doesn't reduce demand for continental water supplies.”

However, after publishing those results, Odell learned that new estimates at the national level showed that desalination operations had begun to replace the use of continental water after 2018. In two case studies that he currently focuses on — the Escondida and Los Pelambres copper mines — the mining companies have expanded their desalination objectives in order to reduce extraction from key continental sources. This seems to be due to a variety of factors. For one thing, in 2022, Chile’s water code was reformed to prioritize human water consumption and environmental protection of water during scarcity and in the allocation of future rights. It also shortened the granting of water rights from “in perpetuity” to 30 years. Under this new code, it is possible that the mining industry may have expanded its desalination efforts because it viewed continental water resources as less secure, Odell surmises.

As part of the J-WAFS project, Odell has found that recent reactions have been mixed when it comes to the rapid increase in the use of desalination. He spent over two months doing fieldwork in Chile by conducting interviews with members of government, industry, and civil society at the Escondida, Los Pelambres, and Andina mining sites, as well as in Chile’s capital city, Santiago. He has spoken to local and national government officials, leaders of fishing unions, representatives of mining and desalination companies, and farmers. He observed that in the communities where the new desalination plants are being built, there have been concerns from community members as to whether they will get access to the desalinated water, or if it will belong solely to the mines.

Interviews at the Escondida and Los Pelambres sites, in which desalination operations are already in place or under construction, indicate acceptance of the presence of desalination plants combined with apprehension about unknown long-term environmental impacts. At a third mining site, Andina, there have been active protests against a desalination project that would supply water to a neighboring mine, Los Bronces. In that community, there has been a blockade of the desalination operation by the fishing federation. “They were blockading that operation for three months because of concerns over what the desalination plant would do to their fishing grounds,” Odell says. And this is where the idea of hydrosocial displacement comes into the picture, he explains. Even though desalination operations are easing tensions with highland agricultural communities, new issues are arising for the communities on the coast. “We can't just look to desalination to solve our problems if it's going to create problems somewhere else” Odell advises.

Within the process of hydrosocial displacement, interacting geographical, technical, economic, and political factors constrain the range of responses to address the water conflict. For example, communities that have more political and financial power tend to be better equipped to solve water conflict than less powerful communities. In addition, hydrosocial concerns usually follow the flow of water downstream, from the highlands to coastal regions. Odell says that this raises the need to look at water from a broader perspective.

“We tend to address water concerns one by one and that can, in practice, end up being kind of like whack-a-mole,” says Odell. “When we think of the broader hydrological system, water is very much linked, and we need to look across the watershed. We can't just be looking at the specific community affected now, but who else is affected downstream, and will be affected in the long term. If we do solve a water issue by moving it somewhere else, like moving a tailings dam somewhere else, or building a desalination plant, resources are needed in the receiving community to respond to that,” suggests Odell.

The company building the desalination plant and the fishing federation ultimately reached an agreement and the desalination operation will be moving forward. But Odell notes, “the protest highlights concern about the impacts of the operation on local livelihoods and environments within the much larger context of industrial pollution in the area.”

The power of communities

The protest by the fishing federation is one example of communities coming together to have their voices heard. Recent proposals by mining companies that would affect glaciers and other water sources used by agriculture communities have led to other protests that resulted in new agreements to protect local water supplies and the withdrawal of some of the mining proposals.

Odell observes that communities have also gone to the courts to raise their concerns. The Atacameño communities, for example, have drawn attention to over-extraction of water resources by the Escondida mine. “Community members are also pursuing education in these topics so that there's not such a power imbalance between mining companies and local communities,” Odell remarks. This demonstrates the power local communities can have to protect continental water resources.

The political and social landscape of Chile may also be changing in favor of local communities. Beginning with what is now referred to as the Estallido Social (social outburst) over inequality in 2019, Chile has undergone social upheaval that resulted in voters calling for a new constitution. Gabriel Boric, a progressive candidate, whose top priorities include social and environmental issues, was elected president during this period. These trends have brought major attention to issues of economic inequality, environmental harms of mining, and environmental justice, which is putting pressure on the mining industry to make a case for its operations in the country, and to justify the environmental costs of mining.

What happens after the mine dries up?

From his fieldwork interviews, Odell has learned that the development of mines within communities can offer benefits. Mining companies typically invest directly in communities through employment, road construction, and sometimes even by building or investing in schools, stadiums, or health clinics. Indirectly, mines can have spillover effects in the economy since miners might support local restaurants, hotels, or stores. But what happens when the mine closes? As one community member Odell interviewed stated: “When the mine is gone, what are we going to have left besides a big hole in the ground?”

Odell suggests that a multi-pronged approach should be taken to address the future state of water and mining. First, he says we need to have broader conversations about the nature of our consumption and production at domestic and global scales. “Mining is driven indirectly by our consumption of energy and directly by our consumption of everything from our buildings to devices to cars,” Odell states. “We should be looking for ways to moderate our consumption and consume smarter through both policy and practice so that we don’t solve climate change while creating new environmental harms through mining.”

One of the main ways we can do this is by advancing the circular economy by recycling metals already in the system, or even in landfills, to help build our new clean energy infrastructure. Even so, the clean energy transition will still require mining, but according to Odell, that mining can be done better. “Mining companies and government need to do a better job of consulting with communities. We need solid plans and financing for mine closures in place from the beginning of mining operations, so that when the mine dries up, there's the money needed to secure tailings dams and protect the communities who will be there forever,” Odell concludes.

Overall, it will take an engaged society — from the mining industry to government officials to individuals — to think critically about the role we each play in our quest for a more sustainable planet, and what that might mean for the most vulnerable populations among us.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Fire for Watersheds

To bring more water to the landscape — and fight the growing risk of catastrophic wildfires — a Tribe in California helps to reshape fire management policy. The post Fire for Watersheds appeared first on The Revelator.

Originally published by BioGraphic. Fire is not coming easily to the pile of dried grass and brush. Four college students fuss with the smoldering heap while Ron Goode, a bear-like man with a graying braid, leans on his cane and inspects their work. Crouch down low, he tells them. Reach farther into the brush with the lighter. Tentative orange flames spring to life and a student in a tie-dyed t-shirt blows gently, imploring them not to die. It’s a clear November day in the western foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada near the town of Mariposa. The students, visiting from the University of California, Berkeley, are here to help revitalize a patch of live oaks that belongs to Goode’s wife’s family. Goode, the chairman of the North Fork Mono Tribe, is here to teach them how. Now in his early 70s, Goode and his Tribe have worked for decades to restore neglected meadows and woodlands on private property,  reservations belonging to other Tribes, and on their own ancestral homelands in the Sierra National Forest. And restoration, in these dry hills, calls for fire. Dressed in cotton shirts and pants, the students feeding the thread of smoke in the oak grove look more like landscapers than a fire crew. “We’re not firefighters. We’re burners, professional burners,” Goode explains. “And we’re using Native knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge, from centuries ago.” This approach, employed by Native peoples across the world, is known as cultural burning. Once the fire is rolling, the students use pruning shears to cut more naked stems of Ta-ka-te, or sourberry (Rhus trilobata), down to the ground and toss those onto the now crackling pile. The next morning, after the flames have devoured this fuel, Goode’s grandnephew Jesse Valdez will coach the students on how to mix the cooling ash into the soil with rakes, to fertilize the roots below. After piles are burned and extinguished, fire practitioners will rake the ash into the soil to fertilize the roots below. Photograph by Ashley Braun Cultural burning is a kind of gardening. This Indigenous stewardship tradition of clearing, landscaping, and burning mimics natural disturbances, which create a diverse mosaic of habitats and trigger beneficial growth patterns in certain plants. Goode, Valdez, and other practitioners use small, targeted fires to help reshape and rejuvenate landscapes, both for the overall ecological health of the land and for specific cultural purposes, from cultivating traditional foods to sustaining ceremonial practices. Fire, for instance, stimulates Mo-nop’, or deergrass (Muhlenbergia rigens), to explode with flowers. Nium people, as the Mono call themselves, use these flexible flower stalks to weave watertight baskets coiled and patterned like rattlesnakes. And towering Wi-yap’, or black oak (Quercus kelloggii) yield bushels of healthy acorns — once a staple in many Native Californian diets. Low-intensity fires discourage competing conifers, smoke out pests, and clear fuels that threaten to carry flames into the oaks’ more vulnerable crowns. Fire also improves fruit production in berry patches — another key food source for people and animals. Acorns were once a staple among many California Natives, accounting for up to 50 percent of Indigenous diets in the state. Photograph by Ashley Braun Before foreign colonizers arrived and suppressed the practice, Native Californians often lit low-intensity fires to realize benefits like these. Frequent, low-intensity fire also inoculated the landscape against the kind of destructive megafires that regularly scorch the West Coast today. In fact, fire was so endemic in pre-colonial times that the total area burned in California each year was far greater than that burned by modern megafires. But instead of leaving a blackened moonscape largely devoid of life, the low-intensity fires revitalized the land. Now, Indigenous peoples across the United States are reclaiming traditional fire stewardship practices, from California and Oregon to Minnesota and Texas. They are reviving their connections to their cultures and homelands, restoring ecosystems, boosting biodiversity, and reducing wildfire risk. In California, they’re even using fire — counterintuitively — to bring water back to the parched land. “Let’s go way back in time,” Goode says, beginning a Nium story. “Tobahp — Land — married Pia — Water — and they had a mischievous child named Kos. And Kos is Fire. Kos liked to run around out in the forest and leave a trail, and wherever Kos went, his father Pia would follow him and sprinkle water on his trail, and his mother Tobahp would come along and plant flowers and plants.” The ancient allegory describes wildfire in the Sierra, Goode explains: After flames pass over the land, “Water is everywhere, and the first thing that starts popping up are all the cultural plants and the flowers.” Learning to harness fire and its benefits over millennia allowed Native Californians like the Nium to create and maintain open, park-like landscapes. They wanted clear sightlines to watch for danger and protect their villages and families. And the grassy oak savannas and meadows that they tended with cultural burning were ideal for gathering food, medicines, and other supplies, as well as for travel and hunting. Meadows are good for more than just people, says Joanna Clines, a Sierra National Forest botanist who has worked with the North Fork Mono on restoration. These wetland ecosystems are often-spring-fed and boast “a huge explosion of diversity,” Clines explains, including dozens of species of sedges, rushes, and grasses,  which in turn provide cover and forage for deer, birds, frogs, snakes, and other fauna. Wildflowers like common camas hide delicious bulbs beneath the damp soil and produce blooms that attract native butterflies and bees. Comprising just 2% of the region today — historically they may have covered more than four times that — meadows “are the gems of the Sierra Nevada,” Clines says. But from the late 18th to the early 20th century, colonists violently removed Indigenous stewards from their meadows, and from the land. Fires were snuffed out or never lit. Indigenous people in the Sierra and beyond were killed in droves, forced to assimilate, and corralled onto reservations. Spanish missionaries were first to ban cultural burning, followed later by the U.S. government. After a devastating complex of wildfires burned 3 million acres in the Northern Rockies in 1911, Congress passed a law establishing a national forest policy of fire prevention and suppression. The Bureau of Indian Affairs later adopted it on reservations. The land and people are still recovering from their forced separation from fire. Fifty miles east of Mariposa, Goode surveys a meadow within the North Fork Mono’s homelands, where fragrant native mint and soaproot toast in the autumn sun, alongside a muddy spring. The meadow is part of the 1.3-million-acre Sierra National Forest. For a long time, the Tribe tended deergrass and other resources here, Goode says, but in the early 1980s, many began to feel that the national forest no longer welcomed them in this place. Without the Tribe’s ministrations, ponderosa pines marched in, along with aggressive European invaders like Scotch broom, shading out what had been the largest deergrass bed in their homelands. In 2003, Dave Martin, a friendly new Forest Service district ranger, invited the North Fork Mono back to this meadow. When the Tribe returned, they found it unrecognizable. But with initial help from an environmental nonprofit and local volunteers, the Tribe chopped brush and selectively logged to mimic what fire would have accomplished had it been allowed. They also performed three cultural burns between 2005 and 2010. Some pines were too large for them to cut or burn, but the utility company PG&E serendipitously felled them later as it cleared space around its powerlines to avoid sparking wildfires. Freed from thirsty conifers, the meager spring began gushing through the summer. Within a few years, Goode says, these five verdant acres were once again worthy of the label “meadow.” A stately black oak — a favorite tree among many California Tribes — drops acorns at its margin, and Goode points out the sprawling hummocks of returned bunchgrasses, their green glow fading to straw. “These are all the fresh deergrasses,” he says. “They go way up, all the way to the farthest telephone pole now.” The link between fire and water is well-recognized among fire-dependent Indigenous cultures worldwide, says Frank Kanawha Lake, a Forest Service fire ecologist who collaborates with Goode on research. Historical records suggest that Tribes throughout California, for example, have long known that burning brush makes springs run better and helps save water, according to research by Lake, who has family ties to the Karuk and Yurok. Even in swampy Florida, the Seminole Tribe has a long history of burning in marshes and other damp ecosystems to encourage cultural and medicinal plants that require a higher water table. The Maar-speaking Indigenous peoples of southeastern Australia, meanwhile, tell a story about a vengeful cockatoo who sets a grass fire that prompts a musk duck to shake its wings, filling lakes and swamps with water. Western science is just starting to catch up with this kind of Indigenous knowledge. Tucked beyond the iconic monolith Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, north of Goode’s restored meadow, Illilouette Creek rushes past streaked granite and patches of charred pines. For almost a hundred years, federal land managers suppressed every blaze in the creek’s fire-adapted basin. Then, in 1968, the National Park Service acknowledged fire’s ecological role with a new policy of “Natural Fire Management.” The policy allowed lightning-caused wildfires to burn in zones where they didn’t threaten human health or infrastructure and where natural fuel breaks contained their reach. By 1972, Yosemite had applied the approach to granite-flanked Illilouette Creek Basin. In the following four and a half decades, wildfire remade the landscape, though not in the way of the megafires that often grab headlines today. Instead, the blazes were more frequent, smaller, and burned with varying degrees of severity — likely aided at first by the cooler, wetter climate of the 1970s and ’80s. Using aerial photography, ecohydrologist Gabrielle Boisramé and a handful of collaborators discovered that Illilouette Basin’s forest cover shrank by a quarter, more closely approximating historical conditions.  New holes appeared in the canopy, filling in with shrublands and meadow-like fields, which have more than tripled in area since 1972. In 2019, Boisramé published a model-based study that suggested these changes have made the basin modestly but notably wetter. “In the more open areas — which are maintained open by fire — you get deeper snow, and it sticks around longer,” in part because more of it reaches the ground, says Boisramé, who’s now based at the nonprofit Desert Research Institute in Nevada. “That means that water from the snowmelt is getting added to the soil later into the dry season, which is better for vegetation, and can help maintain some of those wet meadows” — as well as boost streamflows and groundwater in a region often grappling with drought. Her previous modeling also shows that fire’s return brings as much as a 30% spike in soil moisture during the summer. The extra water stored and the smaller number of trees competing for it seem to have helped Illilouette’s trees weather the state’s worst drought in centuries, even as trees in the adjacent Sierra National Forest died in droves, Boisramé says. And the type of fire diversity now found in Illilouette is connected to better long-term carbon storage and greater biodiversity, with documented benefits for bees, understory plants, bats, and birds. Teasing out fire’s precise and myriad influences on hydrology is challenging, given the many variables involved for any particular place or circumstance. However, Boisramé’s studies are part of a small but growing body of work that suggests frequent fire has long-term hydrologic benefits for ecosystems adapted to such blazes. In the mid-20th century, pioneering fire researcher Harold Biswell found that the prescribed burns he conducted on cattle ranches in the Sierra Nevada foothills helped revive summer-parched springs. That aligns with research in the western U.S. showing that some watersheds — particularly those without substantial groundwater stores to feed waterways — see more water in streams after fire, likely thanks to fewer thirsty plants. Researchers in Australia, meanwhile, recently published a paper suggesting that European colonization of southeast Tasmania created the region’s dry scrublands and devastating megafires by suppressing Indigenous burning that had maintained waterlogged heathlands. Fire has less direct benefits, too. Inspired by the knowledge of Indigenous burners in the Karuk Tribe, have shown that wildfire smoke can block enough solar radiation to cool rivers and streams by nearly 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit. In some cases, that could offer localized relief to cold-water species like salmon during the changing climate’s hottest summer days. As more scientists and conservationists recognize the ways Indigenous people shaped ecosystem biodiversity and resilience with fire, there’s an opportunity to return reciprocity to management, says Lake — and to reconnect people and place. “What is our human responsibility, and what are our human services for that ecosystem?” he asks. “How do we prescribe the right amount of fire today, fire as medicine? Traditional knowledge can guide us.” There is little question that the land needs help. Of the more than 8,200 meadows that the Forest Service has documented in the Sierra Nevada, the agency has listed 95% as unhealthy, or worse, no longer functioning as meadow ecosystems. The North Fork Mono have taken on the task of reviving some of these places in addition to the deergrass meadow that Goode showed me. Working alongside the Forest Service, they’ve begun restoring at least five others in the Sierra National Forest since 2003. In 2018, and again last year, Goode signed five-year agreements with the Forest Service that he hopes will allow the Tribe to restore many more. Those agreements explicitly acknowledge their authority to carry out Indigenous fire management. But their traditional management practices have been challenging to implement. Goode and his team have so far assessed nine meadows for restoration — and eventually, for cultural burning. They and the Forest Service are working to cut down encroaching conifers and shrubs, clear dead and fallen trees and other vegetation, create piles for burning, remove noxious weeds, clear gullies, and build structures to stabilize eroding soil. All paving the way for vibrant meadows that will hold onto water. As some elements of those projects move forward, Goode’s team has so far hit a roadblock when it comes to lighting the actual fires. According to Goode, under the agreements, “it’s us putting fire on the ground, and them participating if they wish.” But the Forest Service won’t allow someone to set a fire unless they have a “red card” obtained through rigorous firefighter training. “The forest is in dire need of restoration, and cultural burning is certainly going to be a key component going forward,” says Dean Gould, Sierra National Forest supervisor. But the agency wants to operate as safely as possible, he adds. Fire practitioners must work in forests laced with buildings and infrastructure, under unprecedented climatic conditions and huge fuel loads. For his part, Gould blames the delay mostly on a lack of capacity. Several recent historic wildfires within the national forest have kept its staff from building a more robust prescribed fire program, which would coordinate cultural burns. The COVID pandemic added other delays, as did a slew of onerous new nation-wide recommendations for prescribed fire that the Forest Service issued in 2022 after losing control of two such burns in New Mexico. Tribes hoping to implement cultural burning on federal lands commonly face challenges like the ones the Nork Fork Mono has come up against. “[B]oth state and federal agencies lack an adequate understanding of Tribes and cultural fire practitioners, their expertise and authority, land tenure, and the requirements of cultural burns,” write the authors of a report put together for the Karuk Tribe. That, in turn, has led to “confusion, delay, and red-tape,” as well as interference with tribal sovereignty. “Either we do cultural burning the way it’s supposed to be done, or we’re not going to do it,” says Goode, whose team has more than a hundred small piles of brush prepped and waiting in two Sierra National Forest meadows — ready for them to light and tend the fires before snow falls. Indigenous fire stewardship also includes cultural rituals such as burning sage, which is sacred to many Native communities of California and Mexico. Photograph by Ashley Braun Traditional practitioners often see requirements like red cards as inconsistent with cultural burning, explains Jonathan Long, a Forest Service ecologist who has worked with several Tribes on the issue. Part of the problem is that cultural burning adopts precautions in fundamentally different ways than typical agency burns do. Their intentions and practices, for example, make for safer burns as a general rule. Practitioners tend to ignite only small patches of lower-intensity fire; they welcome both youth and elders to teach and learn; they manicure away risky fuels; and they tend burns closely enough to reduce impacts on cultural resources like deergrass, as well as other plants and wildlife. It’s akin to a city installing bike lanes and traffic-slowing measures so parents can transport kids safely to school by bike, instead of strapping them in car seats inside bulky SUVs. Either way, kids arrive in one piece, but the approaches are vastly different. There’s also not yet an official playbook for cultural burning within the Forest Service to help guide agency staff, which holds the process back. But Gould says he is part of a regional effort to draft such a policy and that his staff are thinking about how to apply that in the Sierra National Forest. “I think people are trying to work through, how do we craft the system in ways that will distinguish cultural burning from the wildfire suppression and large prescribed fire events where the risks are different?” says Long. Still, Long sees more opportunities for traditional fire practices opening up, especially in California, where in recent years the state has rolled out new policies that ease barriers to cultural burning on state and private lands. And at the federal level, in late 2022 the U.S. Forest Service announced 11 major agreements to jointly manage lands with Tribes, including one that allows the Karuk Tribe to conduct cultural burns in partnership with the Six Rivers National Forest in California. The White House followed that announcement with the first-ever national guidance on Indigenous knowledge for federal agencies. The document explicitly recognized the North Fork Mono Tribe for collaborating on research examining cultural burning and climate resilience. In December, Goode’s grandnephew Valdez trained the Tule River Indian Tribe and Sequoia National Forest staff during a cultural burn at that forest. Sierra National Forest staff also attended, hoping to use the event’s success as a springboard in their own forest, according to Gould. But Goode, now facing serious health issues, is losing patience with the plodding government agency overseeing his Tribe’s homelands, and is even considering legal options for enforcing his Tribe’s right to burn. “You’re not doing it fast enough, not just for the Tribe’s benefit, but for the land,” he says. As the light retreats after the first day of burning near Mariposa, Goode and Valdez, both of whom also work as tribal archaeologists, gather the students next to a wide meadow. Goode’s wife’s property, where they’ve been working, lies within the ancestral territory of the Miwok people,  and a few years ago, Goode, Valdez, and a large volunteer contingent worked with some Miwok to clear and burn this portion of the land. These burns represent an intergenerational transfer of knowledge and culture, a core part of the practice and key to its continuity. While the sky turns citrus, the group stands atop a massive slab of granite bedrock that emerges from the sea of amber grass like the back of a gray whale. It’s pockmarked with deep, perfectly round holes, some filled with rotting leaves and recent rainwater. Here, the pair explains, the Miwok women who lived in this place at least as far back as 8,000 years ago milled acorns with stone pestles, their daily rhythms grinding permanent impressions into the stone. “They need to be cleaned and cleared out,” Goode says of the mortars. “Right now these are all deteriorating.” Like the meadow here that needed burning, even features as immutable-seeming as these bedrock mortars need tending. They need the Indigenous stewards whose hands shaped them; and people today to remember how to sustain the land. After the archaeology lesson, everyone piles back into trucks to return for dinner: foil-wrapped potatoes, roasting in the embers of today’s fire. Previously in The Revelator: Wildfires Ignite Mental Health Concerns The post Fire for Watersheds appeared first on The Revelator.

California increases water allocation after wet winter, but fish protections limit pumping

California has increased water allocations to 40% of full allotments from the State Water Project. Officials say environmental regulations have limited pumping.

With runoff from this year’s snow and rain boosting the levels of California’s reservoirs, state water managers on Tuesday announced plans to increase deliveries of supplies from the State Water Project to 40% of full allotments, up from 30% last month.The increased allocation, which had been widely expected, means that suppliers serving 27 million Californians, as well as some farming areas, will have substantially more water available to use and store this year. But the Department of Water Resources also said officials have had to limit pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta this year because of environmental protections for native fish.Although this year has brought average wet conditions, the agency said its ability to move water south through the system of aqueducts and reservoirs has been “impacted by the presence of threatened and endangered fish species” near the state’s pumping facilities in the south delta.“The presence of these fish species has triggered state and federal regulations that significantly reduce the pumping from the Delta into the California Aqueduct,” John Yarbrough, acting deputy director of the State Water Project, said in a notice outlining the increased allocation. Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science. That has limited the state’s ability to move water south to San Luis Reservoir, which stands at 72% of capacity — a level that is 86% of average for this time of year.The reduced pumping is expected to continue into late spring, Yarbrough said. State officials then expect to increase pumping significantly this summer, once conditions allow for it under the pumping facilities’ permits.Environmental and fishing groups have criticized a recent rise in the estimated numbers of fish that have died at the pumping facilities in the delta, and have demanded that state and federal agencies take steps to limit the losses of threatened steelhead trout and endangered winter-run chinook salmon.The massive pumps that draw water into the State Water Project and the federally managed Central Valley Project are strong enough that they can reverse the flow in parts of the south delta.The losses of fish are estimated based on how many fish are collected at a state facility near the pumps and trucked to nearby areas of the delta, where they are released. The calculations attempt to account for fish that are caught by predators and those that are killed when they are sucked into pumps.State water managers said they are taking various steps to limit the losses of fish. They said pumping has been reduced this month to minimal levels in order to comply with spring flow requirements.The Department of Water Resources said the increased allocation was based on the latest snowpack and runoff data. The snowpack measures 99% of average for this time of year, and the amount of runoff is projected to be above average.The state’s reservoirs rose dramatically in 2023, which brought one of the wettest winters on record, and this year’s storms have again boosted reservoir levels.Lake Oroville, the state’s second largest reservoir, is now at 94% of capacity and is projected to completely fill next month.The water that is pumped from the delta and flows south into the California Aqueduct provides a significant portion of Southern California’s supplies.With the increased allocation, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will be able to meet the region’s water demands this year and will have surplus water to put into storage, said Adel Hagekhalil, the MWD’s general manager.That will build on the record 3.4 million acre-feet of water that the district has banked in various reservoirs and underground storage areas. The MWD’s added supplies amount to about 200,000 acre-feet, enough to supply roughly 600,000 typical households for a year.“We will make every effort to store as much water as possible in every storage account available, for use during the next dry year,” Hagekhalil said.He urged Southern Californians to keep up their efforts to save water.“The more efficient we all are during these wet years, the more water we can keep in storage for use during the next inevitable drought to provide reliable water supplies,” he said.The final water allocation still could change in May or June as state water managers reassess conditions.The restrictions on pumping this year have coincided with the ongoing debate over the efforts of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration to advance the proposed Delta Conveyance Project, a 45-mile tunnel that would transport water beneath the delta.Karla Nemeth, director of the Department of Water Resources, said the limitations on pumping this year underscore “the challenges of moving water in wet periods with the current pumping infrastructure in the south Delta.”“We had both record low pumping for a wet year and high fish salvage at the pumps,” Nemeth said in a press release. “We need to be moving water when it’s wet so that we can ease conditions for people and fish when dry conditions return.”She said in a wet year like this, the proposed tunnel would allow the state to move more water during high flows “in a manner safer for fish.”Her department estimated that if the Delta tunnel had been in place this winter, the State Water Project would have been able to capture an additional 909,000 acre-feet of water, enough to supply roughly 3 million households for a year.The State Water Contractors, an association of 27 public agencies that purchase the water, reiterated its support for moving forward with the Delta Conveyance Project.“Water deliveries should be far higher in a good water year like we’ve had,” said Jennifer Pierre, the association’s general manager. “Today’s modest allocation highlights just how difficult it is to operate within current regulatory constraints and with infrastructure in need of modernization. Even in a good water year, moving water effectively and efficiently under the current regime is difficult.”Newsom has called the Delta Conveyance Project a central piece of his administration’s strategy for making the state’s water-delivery system more resilient to the effects of climate change.Opponents are trying to block the project in the courts. Environmental groups, fishing advocates, tribal leaders and local agencies have said the Delta Conveyance Project would harm the delta’s ecosystem and have also raised other concerns.In one of the latest court cases, four environmental groups and the Central Delta Water Agency are seeking to challenge the state’s reliance on decades-old water rights permits for the project. They’ve argued that the State Water Resources Control Board has wrongly given preferential treatment to the state, which is seeking to use water rights that were originally filed in 1955 and 1972.Lawyer Osha Meserve, who represents the Central Delta Water Agency, said the state water board is letting the Department of Water Resources “cut in line ahead of thousands of other water rights holders” — and ahead of flows that are necessary to keep the delta and its fish healthy.

Thames Water could raise bills to £627 a year to help fix leaks

Embattled water supplier promises to invest up to £3bn more over the next five yearsBusiness live – latest updatesThames Water could raise bills to as much as £627 a year to pay to fix its leaky network, after promising to invest up to £3bn more over the next five years.The embattled water supplier said on Monday that it had updated its spending plans for 2025 to 2030 after discussions with the industry regulator, Ofwat. Continue reading...

Thames Water could raise bills to as much as £627 a year to pay to fix its leaky network, after promising to invest up to £3bn more over the next five years.The embattled water supplier said on Monday that it had updated its spending plans for 2025 to 2030 after discussions with the industry regulator, Ofwat.In October it submitted its business plan, known as a PR24, to Ofwat, pledging to spend £18.7bn over the period, and raise bills by 40% to £610 excluding inflation.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 promotionThe company has now said it will definitely spend a further £1.1bn – totalling £19.8bn – to address environmental concerns over sewage dumping in the sector.Thames said it could spend £1.9bn on top of this – totalling £21.7bn over the period – depending on the availability of labour in its supply chain, which it would agree on an annual basis with Ofwat. If this occurred, bills for Thames’s 16 million customers would reach £627 by 2030, a 44% increase, excluding inflation.Thames is under intense scrutiny amid fears over its financial stability and questions over whether its shareholders are willing to pay upfront for its investments, before they are recovered from consumers through bills.The government is preparing plans in case the debt-laden company collapses, including renationalisation. The Guardian revealed last week that Whitehall contingency plans for a renationalisation could include the bulk of its £15.6bn debt being added to the public purse, with some lenders to its core operating company potentially losing up to 40% of their money.Thames said on Monday it had been able to up its spending without increasing bills “due to a rebalancing of operating and capital expenditures”.The Thames Water chief executive, Chris Weston, said: “Our business plan focuses on our customers’ priorities. As part of the usual ongoing discussions relating to PR24, we’ve now updated it to deliver more projects that will benefit the environment.“We will continue to discuss this with our regulators and stakeholders.”Shareholders said last month they were not willing to put in a promised £500m while a standoff between Thames and Ofwat continued.The Guardian revealed last week that Thames was considering issuing more debt to help fund its plans, adding to its £15.6bn debt pile.

‘No dividing line’: consultants advising private water companies also work for their regulator, Ofwat

Campaigners call for the whole regulatory system to be replaced after Observer analysis finds watchdog spent more than £25m with consultanciesThe water industry regulator has spent £26.7m on business consultants in the past five years, including several companies that have simultaneously worked for private water firms, the Observer can reveal.The findings prompted environmental campaigner Feargal Sharkey to call for Ofwat to be abolished as fellow campaigners said there appeared to be no dividing line between “those who are meant to enforce the law and those who routinely break it”. Continue reading...

The water industry regulator has spent £26.7m on business consultants in the past five years, including several companies that have simultaneously worked for private water firms, the Observer can reveal.The findings prompted environmental campaigner Feargal Sharkey to call for Ofwat to be abolished as fellow campaigners said there appeared to be no dividing line between “those who are meant to enforce the law and those who routinely break it”.The Observer analysed invoices paid to Ofwat’s private sector suppliers from 2019 to the first three months of 2024, collated by procurement specialists Tussell.The firm that received by far the most income from Ofwat over that period was PwC – which netted more than £11.5m, almost half the total.PwC audits the accounts of Thames Water, which submitted plans last week to raise bills by 56% over the next five years, as well as providing services to the wider sector.In a document sent to potential industry clients in 2013, the firm said its “leading role in professional and standard-setting organisations puts us in an ideal position to advise on regulatory, operating effectiveness and other developments”.Several of the other consultancy companies used by Ofwat advertise their services working for the water industry on their websites.In March it was revealed that raw sewage was discharged into waterways for 3.6m hours in 2023 by England’s privatised water firms, more than double the figure in 2022.At the core of the issue has been claims that water companies have invested too little in infrastructure while paying huge dividends to shareholders.The water industry has paid shareholders £78bn in dividends in the just over three decades since it was privatised, while amassing £64bn of debt, despite being debt-free when sold to the private sector.“What we’re looking at right now is nothing more than the physical mani­festation of three decades of political neglect, regulatory failure and corporate greed,” said Sharkey. “Ofwat needs to be abolished, and it needs to happen today,” he added. “The whole of the regulatory system of the water industry needs dismantling and utter reform, as do those companies that have milked us for nearly £80bn worth of cash, leaving over £60bn of debt behind them.“The truth is we need to point the finger at the regulator, who simply wasn’t up to it, wasn’t capable and has to go.”Surfers Against Sewage chief executive, Giles Bristow said: “The regulators have already been exposed for schmoozing water industry fat cats at exclusive members clubs and now this - is there anything that divides those who are meant to enforce the law and those who routinely break it?“For people across the country, who are rightly furious about the sewage being dumped into our rivers and seas, this is a bad look at a bad time for a supposedly expert independent body.“It’s time for Ofwat to get their house in order and put clear water between themselves and our scandal-ravaged water industry, because, right now, the picture looks very murky indeed.”An Ofwat spokesperson said PwC was its “main delivery partner” during its price review process – where Ofwat outlines the maximum water companies can charge to users and service standards for the industry. The spokesperson said the firm delivered “additional technical expertise in areas such as financial modelling, economics and engineering”.They added that a “rigorous conflict procedure” ensured that “any potential conflicts of interest were identified and managed appropriately”.A spokesperson for PwC said the firm adheres “strictly to all regulatory, professional, ethical and independence standards”, and has no “decision-making responsibility” in its services to Ofwat.

‘Dirty secret’: insiders say UK water firms knowingly break sewage laws

Exclusive: Whistleblowers point to broader sewage scandal, with wastewater systems manipulated to divert sewageWhistleblowers say UK water companies are knowingly failing to treat legally required amounts of sewage, and that some treatment works are manipulating wastewater systems to divert raw sewage away from the works and into rivers and seas.It is well known that water companies are dumping large volumes of raw sewage into rivers and seas from storm overflows but an investigation by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations reveals that the industry’s “dirty secret” is bigger, broader and deeply systemic. Continue reading...

Whistleblowers say UK water companies are knowingly failing to treat legally required amounts of sewage, and that some treatment works are manipulating wastewater systems to divert raw sewage away from the works and into rivers and seas.It is well known that water companies are dumping large volumes of raw sewage into rivers and seas from storm overflows but an investigation by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations reveals that the industry’s “dirty secret” is bigger, broader and deeply systemic.By law, every wastewater treatment works must treat a minimum amount of sewage as stipulated in their environmental permits. Four whistleblowers have told Watershed that a large proportion regularly fail to do so and are not reporting it to the environmental regulator.The insiders say the amount of sewage reaching a works is being “manipulated at the front end” by “flow trimming”, which can be done a number of ways including by “manually setting penstocks to limit the flow”, by “dropping weir levels” and by “tuning down pumps at pumping stations”. The diverted raw sewage makes its way into ditches, rivers and seas.One industry insider says they “have personally surveyed works and found valves operated and diversion pipes installed so that part of the flow arriving is deliberately diverted to an environmentally sensitive stream, rather than into the works, so that the works passes compliance of sanitary parameters.“I have spoken to staff who have carried out surveys to inform investment plans, who have found that the controls of terminal pumping stations have been deliberately altered so that they pump only a reduced proportion of the flow figure they were designed to pump, in the knowledge that this was a breach of flow compliance. This continues.”The insider adds: “I have spoken to [people at] other water companies who confessed that flow compliance is a dirty secret of the UK water industry, which environmental regulators know about (although perhaps not the scale) and have turned a blind eye due to resourcing constraints.”The raw sewage that is diverted away from the works flows into ditches, rivers and seas and the amount will probably dwarf the volumes dumped into the environment via storm overflows.“It is an enormous scandal that many who work in the industry know about, but nobody wants to talk about,” said the whistleblower. “Water companies report their overall compliance with wastewater rules as good, but dig a little deeper and you’ll see that lots of treatment works are failing to deal with the amount of sewage they are legally meant to treat.”The insider says non-compliance is widespread across the UK, and that they are aware of works where as much as 30% of the sewage they are expected to handle goes straight into the environment without treatment.“Some operators, with or without the support of their chain of command, are deliberately reducing the flow of sewage into the treatment works by either dropping the levels of weirs so that sewage flows out into the environment, or by cutting back the flows at pumping stations. This way they can say they are treating a greater proportion of the sewage they receive because they are now receiving less into the works,” says the whistleblower.“Sadly there are many incentives for water companies, rogue teams or staff to do this, including reduced cost of pumping and treatment, and treatment works that were struggling to comply appearing to be passing, with the resulting regulatory performance rewards leading to staff bonuses and increased dividends to shareholders – with very little risk that the manipulation will be found or anyone prosecuted.”A second insider says it is “almost standard practice to control penstocks by hand to set it at a limit to reduce the flow”, adding that the problem “stems from sweating the assets … There are a lot of undersized, overcapacity sewage treatment works out there … and I’ve rarely seen a works where all the assets are working, there’s usually something out of service.“Spilling to the river saves millions of pounds that they should be spending on assets. Lots of storm tanks are sized to meet 30-year-old permits, and there are sites with no storm capacity at all.”A third insider says they have seen evidence of flow trimming at works owned by two different water companies.“Operational teams on site look for a workaround, often in the full knowledge of what they are doing, and in full knowledge of all the stakeholders, from the project manager all the way up to the person holding the purse strings. Other times it’s done without knowing the implications … no one knows the true scale of what’s happening across the country.”According to a fourth whistleblower, it is possible to identify instances of flow trimming in a company’s figures “but no one truly looks into the data, they won’t look at the detail”.England’s water companies declined to comment, but the industry body Water UK says: “We recognise the current level of spills is unacceptable and we have a plan to sort it out. Between 2025 and 2030 water companies in England and Wales want to invest £96bn to ensure the security of our water supply in the future and significantly reduce the amount of sewage entering rivers and seas. We now need the regulator Ofwat to give us the green light so we can get on with it.”Ofwat says water and wastewater companies’ environmental performance is “simply not good enough” and that the industry regulator is “acutely aware of the damage this does to our natural resources and to public trust.“However, where companies fall short, Ofwat acts – over recent years, we have imposed penalties and payments of over £300m and in November 2021 we announced our biggest ever investigation into all water and wastewater companies in England and Wales, with live enforcement investigations into six companies.“This is specifically investigating whether companies are treating as much sewage at their wastewater treatment works as they should be, and how this could be resulting in sewage discharges into the environment at times when this should not be happening.”The Environment Agency is also investigating. A spokesperson says: “We will always pursue and prosecute companies that are deliberately obstructive or misleading, including on issues around flow compliance. We are conducting our largest-ever criminal investigation into potential widespread non-compliance at thousands of sewage treatment works.”Geraint Weber of the regulator Natural Resources Wales says: “We expect water and sewerage companies to comply with the conditions of their environmental permits. Where non-compliance is identified we won’t hesitate to take action using the full range of enforcement powers available to us.”Nathan Critchlow-Watton of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency says: “Sepa assess Scottish Water’s compliance with authorisation conditions at wastewater treatment works through site inspections, investigating events and incidents, sampling discharges, assessment of operator data and Sepa’s programme of environmental monitoring. We are not aware of any evidence of deliberate misreporting of overflow data by Scottish Water or other operators.”A Scottish Water spokesperson says: “We are not routinely required by licence to assess and report whether we are passing the appropriate pass forward flow at our pumping stations and overflows and at wastewater treatment works. We set out to be compliant across all aspects of our licences and are not aware of any instances where we deliberately manage flows to spill early.”Northern Ireland Water and Welsh Water declined to comment.

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