Global Rundown
- Summer tourism in Argentina’s Patagonian villages is straining local treatment plants beyond capacity, resulting in raw sewage spilling into glacier-fed rivers.
- Deadly storms, landslides, and river surges killed dozens of people along Mexico’s Gulf Coast this weekend.
- One-in-500 year forest fires on the Iberian Peninsula are now expected to occur every 13 years, adding significant strain to farmland and water resources.
- In northern Pakistan, Indigenous knowledge is more trusted than the government’s warning systems in advance of glacial lake outburst floods.
The Lead
In the summer months, the population of El Chaltén — a hiking village in Argentina’s Patagonia region — surges from 2,900 residents to more than 10,000 people including tourists. Such rapid seasonal change puts exceptional strain on the community’s two water treatment plants, and raw sewage overflows into the 330-acre alpine valley. The untreated water contaminates the Fitz Roy and Las Vueltas rivers, both fed from glaciers in nearby Los Glaciares National Park, a UNESCO world heritage site and 600,000-hectare freshwater reservoir.
Residents have taken legal action over the past several years, filing injunctions against the Argentine government for failing to uphold their constitutional right to a healthy environment, the Guardian reports. Sampling conducted in November 2022 in 82 waterways north of Los Glacieres found multiresistant bacteria in waterways where sewage had spilled.
A third treatment facility is under construction, while a grease and oil separation system — aimed to address the problem of restaurant waste, also exacerbated by tourism — is planned for El Chaltén. But environmental advocates still worry for the long-term health of Los Glaciares for as long as Javier Milei, the president of Argentina and a prolific denier of climate change, remains in power.
This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers
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People killed in torrential rains and subsequent flooding and landslides that ravaged multiple Mexican states near the Gulf Coast this week, multiple outlets report. Casualties have been recorded in Hidalgo, Querétaro, Puebla, and Veracruz, where 21 inches of rain fell in just 72 hours. In the town of Poza Rica, located 170 miles northeast of Mexico City, “some low-lying neighborhoods saw 12 feet of water or more when the Cazones River jumped its banks Friday,” the Associated Press reports. At the time of writing, thousands of people were still without running water and electricity, and roughly 100 small communities were cut off from outside communication.
Mexico City’s rainy season, which typically runs from May through October, has been marked this year by isolated extremes. In early August, two inches of rain fell in just 20 minutes in the capital, setting an all-time record. These storms come on the heels of last year’s Day Zero scare, which still lurks as the megacity reckons with fluctuating precipitation patterns.
390,000
Hectares of forest that have burned across Spain so far this year, while 280,000 hectares have been consumed in Portugal, according to data from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System. Altogether, 1 percent of the Iberian Peninsula has burned since January 1.
Most of this damage was incurred over a one week span in August, when Spain endured its most extreme heatwave ever recorded and thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in both countries. During the 16-day heatwave, temperature anomalies reached 4.6 degrees Celsius (more than 8 degrees Fahrenheit) above historic norms, marking “the hottest 10 consecutive days recorded in Spain since at least 1950,” the Guardian reported.
Now, a new analysis from World Weather Attribution suggests that, due to global warming, these conditions are not as rare as they once were. Similar fire-conducive weather is now expected to occur once every 13 years on the peninsula, as opposed to once every 500 years had climate change not been a factor.
The report also mentions rural depopulation — people aging, moving out of rural areas, and less traditional grazing — as contributing to the sharp decline of fire fuel management.
In Context: A World on Fire Is a Water Risk
On the Radar
In Pakistan, ranked as one of the 10 most vulnerable nations to climate change, warmer seasons threaten an increased incidence of glacial lake outburst floods, or GLOFs. These happen when glacial lakes burst their rock or ice dams and inundate downstream areas.
In northern Pakistan, where 13,000 glaciers are at risk of melting, warning systems for these events are life-saving. Systems of sensors and gauges track hazards and issue alerts, though many times the equipment is faulty and disconnected from the dispatching of actual rescue teams.
Al Jazeera reports that most communities rely instead on Indigenous knowledge to help them prepare for these major outbursts. Those who have stewarded these lands for generations know what to look for in advance of these floods, including “natural signs such as sudden heavy rainfall, cloud formations, unusual animal behavior, and distinct roaring sounds.”
Wetland Watch
State Route 37: By 2100, the majority of the California highway is projected to sink beneath the rising San Pablo Bay between Novato and Vallejo, two towns just north of San Francisco. In advance of this soggy reality, engineers are hatching a plan to reconstruct the flood-prone road in tandem with environmental restoration, Bay Nature reports. If all goes according to plan, the $6 billion to $11 billion project will restore 50,000 acres of historic wetlands that were formerly farmed or developed.