Day: March 27, 2022

Major new update to the #Water Conflict Chronology just released. 300 new entries highlighting expanding violence over freshwater resources around the world — @PeterGleick #ActOnClimate

Click the link to access the chronology on the Pacific Institute website:

In an ongoing effort to understand the connections between water resources, water systems, and international security and conflict, the Pacific Institute initiated a project in the late 1980s to track and categorize events related to water and conflict, which has been continuously updated since. The database, most recently updated in March 2022, presents the information as a chronology and map. Use the links below to explore the chronological list of events or the interactive events map.

Citation: Pacific Institute (2022) Water Conflict Chronology. Pacific Institute, Oakland, CA. https://www.worldwater.org/water-conflict/. Accessed: (access date).

Click the link to read “War in Ukraine Lengthens List of Violent Acts over Water” on the Circle of Blue website (Brett Walton). Here’s an excerpt:

In late February, as Vladimir Putin’s war machine was beginning to uncoil, Russian forces destroyed a dam in Ukraine that was blocking water from a Soviet-era canal that flows into Crimea, the peninsula that Russia wrested from its neighbor in 2014. Ukrainians had erected the dam in retaliation for the loss of territory nearly eight years ago.

The destruction of the dam across the North Crimean Canal is the most recent entry in the Water Conflict Chronology, a compendium of violent acts related to water throughout 4,500 years of history. The database is maintained by the Pacific Institute, a water policy think tank…

The newly added incidents reveal the geographic and political dimensions of water-related violence in an era of social turmoil and ecological upheaval. They range in scale from distinctly local disputes to longstanding regional and international flashpoints. In the last year:

  • Two people in Somalia were killed during a fight between militias over water and grazing access.
  • A man was shot and killed in Pakistan in a dispute over an irrigation canal.
  • An activist who led protests for water service was shot and killed in central Mexico.
  • Israeli military forces destroyed a Palestinian-owned irrigation well and other agricultural facilities in a West Bank community.
  • Villagers and farmers in Iran demolished an earthen dam in the western province of Khuzestan to protest the illegal diversion of water by a sugar cane company.

    • Peter Gleick, president emeritus and senior fellow at the Pacific Institute, helped compile the chronology. He told Circle of Blue that an array of environmental, social, and political forces are contributing to the rise in water-related violence. Droughts in farm regions have put pressure on farmers, whose livelihoods depend on water for their crops. Meanwhile, the absence of basic services can aggravate existing tensions.

    Archuleta County discusses river enhancement grant funding — The #PagosaSprings Sun #SanJuanRiver

    Yamaguchi South Planning Project site layout via the City of Pagosa Springs.

    Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Josh Pike):

    At its March 15 work session, the Archuleta County Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) heard an update and funds request from Al Pfister, project manager for Upper San Juan Watershed Enhancement Partnership (WEP). Pfister gave a brief overview of WEP’s Yamaguchi South Project, which will include river restoration, the creation of a new whitewater feature and a new boat put in ad- jacent to the planned Yamaguchi Park South.

    EPA objects to Suncor air quality permit renewal, tells #Colorado pollution control agency to try again: Federal agency expresses concern over environmental injustice toward Suncor’s neighbors — The #Denver Post #ActOnClimate

    Commerce City: This is east of Denver, the industrial suburb of Denver. Photo credit: James from Boulder, USA

    Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Noelle Phillips). Here’s an excerpt:

    The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which submitted the 373-page permit for Suncor, has 90 days to respond to the EPA’s objections and then resubmit. The operating permit regulates the level of various toxic pollutants the refinery can release into the air. The EPA’s objections do not affect the Suncor refinery’s operations and they do not mean the agency will eventually deny the permit renewal.

    The Suncor refinery in Commerce City is pictured on Sand Creek near where it meets the South Platte River. Both streams have highly challenged water quality, though many conservationists argue they can get still better. Photo credit: Suncor

    The refinery has been operating under a permit that was issued in 2006. Those air-quality permits are supposed to be renewed every five years, but Suncor and the state have not applied for renewal since then, meaning the plant has been operating on an expired permit for 16 years.

    The EPA’s objections focused on three sites at the refinery where Suncor uses flares to burn off excess chemicals. The state’s Air Pollution Control Division, which falls under the health department, wanted to exempt those flaring sources from regular monitoring requirements, according to a letter to the agency from KC Becker, the EPA’s regional administrator. The EPA is asking the state to do more analysis and better explain why it believes the flare sites don’t need additional monitoring. The EPA also expressed significant concern about the refinery’s environmental impact on people who live and work within a three-mile radius of the plant, and the federal agency suggested multiple steps the state can take to improve communication with the community when it comes to permitting for the plant and reporting on the pollution that comes from it, the letter said.

    #Colorado #CloudSeeding program aims to make good snow storms better: The decades-old practice is one way, experts say, to bring #water to the drying West — The #Denver Post #aridification

    Cloud-seeding graphic via Science Matters

    Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Conrad Swanson). Here’s an excerpt:

    In short, the kind of clouds that create snowstorms contain massive amounts of super-chilled water vapor, Rickert said. Left alone, those clouds can release some snow and retain the rest of their water vapor. Cloud seeders look to agitate those super-chilled water particles, causing them to freeze inside the cloud. From there they form snowflakes and fall to the ground, Rickert said. Seeders can agitate those particles by plane or from machines on the ground, both processes typically use a silver iodide compound. Airplanes will “pretty much fly right through the cloud,” spraying the compound across a flame, and spreading it throughout the air, sparking the chemical reaction, Rickert said. Ground generators do the same except they use wind drafts to carry the compound into the clouds, he said. he end result? Up to a 12% increase in snowfall for a particular storm, [Andrew] Rickert said…

    Seeding efforts in central Colorado are working well too, according to Dave Kanzer, director of science and interstate matters for the Colorado River District, which helps manage the program in Eagle, Grand, Pitkin and Summit counties. Water from the extra snowfall eventually melts, flowing down Colorado’s rivers and streams and eventually out of state, Rickert noted, so downstream states like Arizona, California, Nevada and New Mexico all chip in to the state’s $1.5 million budget. But there’s a catch, Kanzer added. Cloud seeding can’t create snow storms out of nowhere. They can only enhance existing storms…

    “It’s the only option for physically augmenting snowpack,” Rickert said. “And the only way to actually create and add water to the system.”