Water

Plan To Clean Up Radioactive Fracking Waste Ends In Monster Lawsuit

September 24, 2023 Justin Nobel, DeSmog. Educate! Fracking, health, Legal System, Radiation, Veolia, Water, West Virginia

In rural West Virginia, largely hidden among steep hills, stands a $255 million facility designed to transform fracking waste into freshwater and food grade quality salts. Proponents hailed it as one of the most important environmental projects undertaken by the oil and gas industry in recent U.S. history. But local conservation groups and residents remained skeptical from the start, warning that the plant could leak toxic waste into water and air, harming human health and ecosystems in a largely forested region where tight-knit communities live close to the land. The facility, called Clearwater, was built by the Denver, Colorado-based oil and gas extraction company, Antero Resources, and an affiliate of Veolia, the multinational French waste, water and energy management company.

Prisoners Strike At Oak Park Heights Canteen

September 17, 2023 Dan Feidt, Unicorn Riot. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Minnesota, Prison Labor, Strikes, Wages, Water

Oak Park Heights, MN — Just days after prisoners at the Stillwater prison staged civil disobedience actions by refusing a staff lockdown, incarcerated workers at the nearby ‘level 5’ MCF-Oak Park Heights prison canteen have staged a work strike, according to activists who regularly stay in touch with prisoners. The use of segregation, or sending prisoners to ‘the hole,’ has increased in recent years. Oak Park Heights administrators sent prisoners there 694 times in 2018, according to state Department of Corrections (DOC) data. The Twin Cities branch of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) sent out a press release on the Oak Park Heights work stoppage.

US Military Has New Capacity In Hawaii And Australia To Store Red Hill Fuel

September 3, 2023 Colonel (ret) Ann Wright, Popular Resistance. Educate! Australia, Fossil Fuels, Red Hill, US military, Water

The May and November 2021 fuel leaks of 19,000 gallons of fuel at the 80-year-old Red Hill fuel storage facility into the drinking water aquifer of Honolulu gave toxic exposure to over 93,000 persons. Many are suffering from toxic poisoning that will have lifelong effects. 27,000 gallons of fuel had “leaked” in January 2014. Some families who have lived in the 19 residential areas served by the Red Hill well report they have had health conditions for many years prior to the November 2021 spill that went directly into the Red Hill well. They feel that these health issues may be attributable to the leak in 2014, nine years before.

Biden Infrastructure Report Pushes ‘Disastrous Water Privatization’

September 3, 2023 Julia Conley, Common Dreams. Educate! Infrastructure, Joe Biden, Privatization, Water

An under-the-radar report by U.S. President Joe Biden's National Infrastructure Advisory Council should not go unnoticed, said the national watchdog Food & Water Watch on Thursday, as buried in the document is a call for the privatization of U.S. water systems, which progressive lawmakers and civil society groups have long opposed. On page 15 of the 38-page report, the advisory council said the federal government should "remove barriers to privatization, concessions, and other nontraditional models of funding community water systems in conjunction with each state's development of best practice."

Why Cities Are Opening Their Rivers And Lakes To Swimming

August 29, 2023 Sarah Amandolare, Next City. Create! Cities, climate crisis, Global Warming, Heat, heat islands, Water, water access

As recently as the 1940s, New Yorkers swam in floating pools in the Hudson and East Rivers. A safer alternative to swimming directly in the river, the municipal baths kept residents cool in hot summer months until they were closed over sanitation concerns. Now, as the city contends with life-threatening heat, can New Yorkers once again turn to the rivers to stay cool? The team behind +Pool, an initiative to bring a floating swimming pool to the East River, is betting on it. The organization’s proposed cross-shaped, Olympic-size pool would differ from its historic predecessors in one significant way: filtration.

WILPF Stands Against Radioactive Water Release From Fukushima Daiichi

August 23, 2023 Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Resist! Environment, Fukushima, Japan, Nuclear Power, pollution, Radioactive Waste, Water

The government of Japan will start releasing wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant on Thursday, 24 August 2023. This wastewater has tritium which contains radioactive substances. WILPF is strongly opposed to this and considers this release of radioactive materials as an act of harm that could further contaminate the environment, and adversely impact the people and marine life in and around the Pacific nations. WILPF is a feminist peacebuilding organisation, we believe that environmental justice is one of the key pathways to peace and a just world. We must act now to protect the environment and people who share the Pacific Ocean. Read our open letter below and share as widely as possible. This is the time to act.

25% Of World’s Population Under Extreme Water Stress

August 18, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! climate crisis, Drought, Environment, Water, Water Stress

One fourth of the planet’s population in 25 countries experiences extremely high water stress annually, using nearly all of their available water supply on a regular basis, according to new data from the World Resources Institute (WRI)’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas. Additionally, about four billion people live in conditions where they have high water stress for a minimum of one month out of the year, a report from WRI said. High water stress puts the lives, food, jobs and energy security of people in peril, as water is necessary for the essentials of human survival like agriculture, electricity production and the maintenance of human health.

South Koreans Protest Against Fukushima Nuclear Water Release

August 13, 2023 TeleSur English. Resist! Fukushima, Japan, Nuclear Waste, Radiation, South Korea, Water

On Saturday, thousands of South Koreans marched in Seoul to protest Japan's plans to dump radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean. Protesters are concerned about the risks to food security and marine ecosystems that the release of nuclear wastewater could cause as early as late August. Previously, on Friday, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) found leaks in a hose used at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to transfer nuclear-contaminated wastewater. TEPCO conducted a probe after higher-than-usual levels of radioactive material were detected in rainwater in the dike around a storage tank.

Colorado-Based Water Protector Faces Trial, Shares Wisdom

July 27, 2023 Carolyn Elerding, The Real News Network. Strategize! Colorado, Enbridge, Legal System, Pipelines, Water, Water Protectors

When Mylene Vialard followed her 21-year-old daughter across the US to join the thousands of the resistance by Water Protectors led by Indigenous women at Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, her aim was clear: to help make change, not just for the Indigenous people whose treaty rights, lifeways, and bodies have been violated, but for everyone. What she didn’t know was how much the experience would change her. That was two years ago. Today, up to 760,000 barrels of tar sands oil (bitumen), a particularly resource-intensive and harmful form of crude petroleum, gush from Alberta to Wisconsin through the completed pipeline, and the Boulder-based activist is one of several activists around the US who face felony charges in northern Minnesota’s Aitkin County. Vialard’s trial is the week of August 28.

Despite Heat Deaths, Many States Don’t Require Water Breaks

July 24, 2023 Barbara Barrett, In These Times. Educate! Dehydration, Global Warming, Human Rights, Water, Worker Rights and Jobs, Workplace Safety

Even as summer temperatures soar and states wrangle with protecting outdoor workers from extreme heat, Texas recently enacted a law that axes city rules mandating water and shade breaks for construction workers. In state after state, lawmakers and regulators have in recent years declined to require companies to offer their outdoor laborers rest breaks with shade and water. In some cases, legislation failed to gain traction. In others, state regulators decided against action or have taken years to write and release rules. Heat causes more deaths in the United States each year than any other extreme weather.

Tribes Take The Lead On Regenerative Agriculture

July 21, 2023 Eva Tesfaye, Barn Raiser. Create! Food and Agriculture, Indigenous Knowledge, Regenerative Farming, Water

Not only do the bees produce honey that is sold, but the tribe’s agricultural operation, Ioway Farms, also uses the bees to pollinate its orchard. It’s all part of the work the tribal nation is doing to better farm the land. Rhodd says just a few years ago they used the same row cropping practices as the rest of the Midwest. “What folks didn’t see was the financials of our operation. We were spiraling downwards,” Rhodd says. “Financially we weren’t a profitable farming operation, and it’s due to the mindsets that’s been instilled in us.” The tribe decided to stop “chasing yields” and start implementing practices that are better for the soil, such as prescribed burns and cover crops that keep the ground planted all year round.

Houston Workers Protest New Law Removing Water Break Requirements

July 17, 2023 Emily Foxhall and Francisco Uranga, The Texas Tribune. Resist! Dehydration, Texas, Water, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

Houston — Luz Martínez was working on remodeling a school without air conditioning in the summer when one of her coworkers fell over, vomited and passed out from the heat. On Friday, she joined other workers, labor advocates and politicians on the steps of Houston’s City Hall to protest a new Texas law that will take away cities’ power to help workers who must endure the Texas heat. House Bill 2127, which takes effect on Sept. 1, will do away with local rules that require water breaks for construction workers. The cities of Austin and Dallas, for example, require 10-minute breaks every four hours. San Antonio officials had been considering a similar ordinance.

Supreme Court Keeps Navajo Nation Waiting For Water

June 27, 2023 Anna V. Smith, Umar Farooq and Mark Olalde, ProPublica. Resist! Arizona, Indigenous Rights, Navajo nation, Supreme Court, Water

More than 150 years after the Navajo Nation signed treaties with the United States establishing its reservation and recognizing its sovereignty, the country’s largest tribe still struggles to secure the water guaranteed by those agreements. Decades of negotiations with the state of Arizona have proven fruitless. The state has been uniquely aggressive in using the scarce resource as a bargaining chip to extract concessions from the Navajo Nation and other tribes, dragging out the talks while Indigenous communities await desperately needed water and infrastructure, a recent ProPublica and High Country News investigation found.

Gathering For Indigenous Water Justice And Global Collaboration

June 7, 2023 Wakíŋyaŋ LaPointe, Last Real Indians. Organize! Indigenous Rights, People’s Water Board, Water, Water Protectors

On August 15-17, MKW Co-conveners and partners will convene the Mni Ki Wakan (Water is Sacred) Summit, themed, “Indigenous Water Justice, Global Collaboration, & Dismantling Water Colonialism,” occurring in Rapid City, South Dakota, United States (mnikiwakan.org). The MKW Summit will bring together Indigenous Peoples, youth, and Indigenous-led environmental water organizations. The MKW Summit is a pillar of the Indigenous Water Decade that was first announced in 2016 at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). Since then, the MKW team has engaged in local/transnational partnerships, and initiatives, providing Indigenous water interventions at the UNPFII and the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Geneva, Switzerland.

Arizona Restricts Home Construction Amid Lack Of Groundwater

June 6, 2023 Paige Bennett, EcoWatch. Create! Arizona, climate crisis, Drought, Water

Pressures on water supply around Arizona, along with an ongoing megadrought made worse by climate change, have been addressed by recent limits placed on the construction of new homes around Phoenix. The restrictions are meant to limit projects that would rely on groundwater, as the groundwater supply is already needed by existing properties. Most of Arizona’s water, around 41%, comes from groundwater, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources. Another 36% comes from the Colorado River, although the state, along with California and Nevada, recently agreed to reduce their water intake from the river by 3 million acre-feet through 2026 as the Colorado River faces shortages.

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