#groundwater extraction

[indizombie]

India is the largest extractor of groundwater in the world - many still rely on it for their daily water supply. But almost two-thirds of the country's districts are threatened by falling groundwater levels, the World Bank says. India is projected to face severe water stress by 2050, with 30 cities said to fall in high-risk regions.

‘Madhya Pradesh: Viral video shows Indians risking life for water’, BBC

#BBC #India #Madhya Pradesh #groundwater extraction #groundwater #World Bank #water stress

[greenfue]

Irreversible declines in freshwater storage projected in parts of Asia by 2060

Irreversible declines in freshwater storage projected in parts of Asia by 2060

The Tibetan Plateau, known as the “water tower” of Asia, supplies freshwater for nearly 2 billion people who live downstream. New research led by scientists at Penn State, Tsinghua University and the University of Texas at Austin projects that climate change, under a scenario of weak climate policy, will cause irreversible declines in freshwater storage in the region, constituting a total…

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#carbon emissions #climate change #climate policy #Groundwater #groundwater extraction #India #Substantial reductions #the amplified water shortage #water tower #water transfer projects

[environmentalengineering]

Path Forward provides solution-oriented consulting services in the areas of brownfield and contaminated site characterization, remediation, health risk assessment, environmental due diligence, vapor intrusion mitigation, construction oversight, compliance, litigation support, and more.

#environmental engineering #environmental consulting #air quality monitoring #environmental consulting firm #vapor intrusion #environmental engineer companies #air dispersion modeling #environmental risk assessments #soil vapor extraction #soil and groundwater remediation #groundwater remediation #environmental engineering consultants #toxicology and environmental health #groundwater remediation systems

[feather-bone]

This is the devil’s hole pupfish! A tiny species that lives only in One water-filled limestone cavern in Nevada. It was one of the first animals on the endangered species list. At the last count in 2022 there were 263 pupfish observed - the most in 19 years! They’re tracked pretty carefully, as their 215 square foot habitat (the smallest of any know vertebrate) is fragile and has been disturbed in the past by groundwater extraction and other human interference.

[ID: an illustration of a shiny metallic blue fish, the male devil’s hole pupfish, facing to the right. It is on a lighter blue background with a ripple pattern. End.] l

#fish #fishes #fishblr #devils hole pupfish #icthyology #they were apparently controversial little guys in the 70s bc a family bought the land they’re on and tried to build a bunch of wells #and some agencies were like hey don’t build those here there are these pupfish #and I guess they went to court and it was a whole publicized thing and folks were getting bumper stickers that said either #save the pupfish or kill the pupfish #and the concept of being so self absorbed that you’re like I would rather a species go extinct forever than for one human family to have #wasted some money #and I’m gonna get a bumper sticker that informs you of this #is so fucking funny to me

[bumblebeeappletree]

You can grow tanks, rather than buy them, and they'll have a lot more water-harvesting capacity.

This video is about how living sponges (rain gardens) have far greater capacity than non-living manufactured water tanks, in that they utilize and infiltrate water during and immediately after rains to quickly make more room or capacity for the next rain - even if that rain comes just a few hours after the first rain.

Thus rain gardens (in this case, a water-harvesting, traffic-calming chicane or pull out) typically have much more potential for flood-control, groundwater-recharge, bioremediation (natural filtration of toxins), and heat-island abatement (due to the shading/cooling vegetation they grow and the cooling effect of the water transpiring through these "living pumps").

This works in any climate, but the vegetation changes as you change bioregions. The easiest path to success is to use plants native or indigenous to your area and site's microclimate. Go further, and select native plants that also produce food, medicine, craft/building materials, etc so you grow living pantries, pharmacies, craft suppliers, etc.

At minimum, make sure your tanks overflow to rain gardens, so that overflow is used as a resource. And place those rain gardens and their vegetation where you most need that vegetation, such as trees on the east and west sides of buildings to shade out the morning and afternoon summer sun for free, passive cooling.

The ideal, is that once this rain garden vegetation has become established the only irrigation water it will require is the freely harvested on-site water, so no importing/extracting of groundwater, municipal water, or other is needed. This way we can infiltrate more water into the living system than we take out - thereby enabling the recharge of groundwater, springs, and rivers; instead of their depletion and dehydration.

Get more info on how to do this and harvest many other free, on-site waters at:

https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

where you can buy Brad's award-winning books, "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond" at deep discount direct from Brad at:

https://www.harvestingrainwater.com/s...

For more info on the community water harvesting and native food forestry work check out:

https://dunbarspringneighborhoodfores...

For more videos that expand on this one subscribe to this channel at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Harvestin...

#rainwater

#waterharvesting

#permaculture

#rainwaterharvesting

#Brad Lancaster #solarpunk #permaculture #rain garden #water #rainwater harvesting #rainwater #water harvesting #rain water harvesting #rain water #garden #plants #native plants #native species #groundwater #Youtube

[probablyasocialecologist]

Some of the world’s largest investment banks, pension funds and insurers, including Manulife Financial Corp.’s John Hancock unit, TIAA and UBS, have been depleting California’s groundwater to grow high-value nuts, leaving less drinking water for the surrounding communities, according to a Bloomberg Green investigation. Wall Street has come to Woodville, wringing it dry. Since 2010, six major investors have quadrupled their farmland under management in California, to almost 120,000 acres in all, equivalent to a third of all the cropland in Connecticut.

[...]

This rush for water is an outgrowth of a decades-long bet on farmland by investors who see food cultivation as an asset class virtually assured of appreciating in a warming, more populous world. Globally, large investors and agribusinesses have snapped up about 163 million acres of farmland in more than 100 countries in the past 20 years. The land grab has given rise to a grab of an even scarcer global commodity: water. In a bid to ensure thriving investment portfolios, some of the world’s largest financial entities have amassed control over lakes, rivers and underground aquifers in places from California to Africa, Australia to South America, giving them outsize roles in managing an endangered resource that’s the basis of life on Earth. The trend has contributed to shifting hydrological patterns that stand to permanently disrupt communities’ access to fresh water. Local populations are paying the price in drained wells, high water bills and contaminated water supplies.

[...]

In the past decade, parts of the San Joaquin Valley have dropped as much as a foot per year, according to the US Geological Survey. Subsidence, as the sinking is called, has damaged bridges, canals and other infrastructure that will cost billions of dollars to fix, the state says. The aquifers themselves are irreparable. Many groundwater basins, when drained, never recover their former storage capacity, hydrologists have found. “Groundwater in California has been treated as an extractive resource—you pump and hope for the best,” says Graham Fogg, an emeritus professor of hydrology at the University of California at Davis. “Capitalism is driving this. Investors don’t care, because in 10 years they can make all the money they want and leave.”

#california #water #wall street #agriculture #irrigation #groundwater #emphasis added

[azspot]

In rural Arizona, groundwater is largely unregulated; whoever has the money can drill a well and lay claim to the water. Thus, as household wells were running dry with the falling water table, a Saudi agricultural giant was permitted to use deep industrial wells to extract unlimited amounts of groundwater, allowing it to grow alfalfa in one desert to feed dairy cows eight thousand miles away in another desert, in a water-stressed nation that has, for all the right reasons, banned the cultivation of the crop within its own borders.

The Climate Crisis Could Mean the Twilight of the American West

#arizona

[socialjusticeinamerica]

🤦🏼🤦🏻🤦🏽

[shamandrummer]

The World is Running Out of Water

The world is "running out of water," Makasa Looking Horse says, and if we don't take action soon, it will be too late. Looking Horse, from Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario, Canada, is one of the hosts of the Ohneganos Ohnegahdę:gyo -- Let's Talk about Water podcast, which won a 2021 David Suzuki Foundation Future Ground Prize. The prize recognizes youth-led movements. It's a podcast created, the Suzuki Foundation says, to "engage Indigenous communities and disseminate research findings by facilitating meaningful discussion about water issues and climate change."

Looking Horse points to Aberfoyle, Ontario, where BlueTriton Brands, Inc., an American beverage company based in Connecticut, has permits to take 3.6 million litres of water a day out of an aquifer there. BlueTriton is the new name of the giant corporation better known as Nestlé Waters North America. The name was changed to BlueTriton Brands in 2021.

She says "they're making millions off our water and selling it. And the thing about aquifer waters that it takes 6,000 to 10,000 years for that water to filter through the ground. We'll never see that water within our lifetime again and that's why it's so important that we stop water extraction."

BlueTriton says, in a report from November 2021, that it has conducted "extensive testing and studies over the years to ensure that their operations do not diminish the availability of water for other users or the environment." The company says "permit conditions require BlueTriton to monitor the natural and pumping-related variations in groundwater and surface water levels." The permit was renewed by the Ontario government in 2021 and runs until November 2026.

Looking Horse's commitment to protecting water was passed down from her parents. Her mother is Dawn Martin-Hill, one of the founders of the Indigenous studies program at McMaster University and the winner of the University of Oklahoma's International Water Prize, for her commitment to improving water security for the people of the Six Nations of the Grand River.

Her father is Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe. He was given the responsibility at age 12, the youngest keeper in history. Looking Horse  says her path into activism and water sovereignty didn't happen overnight. It was a long and encompassing journey full of passion for earth, prayer for water and everything on earth.

Similar to Looking Horse, the United Nations (UN) also has concerns about how much water humans can access. According to a UN report, by 2025 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two thirds of the world's population could be living under "water stressed conditions."

In June of 2019, Looking Horse hand delivered a cease and desist letter from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council to Nestlé Waters in Aberfoyle. In 2021, the council sent another letter to BlueTriton, after the company changed its name, saying "the majority of our people at Six Nations do not have access to clean drinking water... we declare your activities to remove [aquifer] waters under our territories unpermitted and demand that you cease your activity immediately."

The fight for water sovereignty and for clean drinking water continues for Looking Horse. "The urgency worldwide is huge because the world is running out of water. This is only one example of exploitative extraction by a big corporation. This doesn't include all of the pollution and micro plastics that are living in waterways and systems across the globe," she said.

"I've been praying for water and working with water for a very long time, and that's where it started," she said. "You start to learn how valuable water is on a spiritual level, but also on a statistic level. The world is really in a water crisis. So, it's in our culture to protect the water and have a responsibility."

#water sovereignty #water is life #clean drinking water #water extraction

[posttexasstressdisorder]

I remember reading this when it came out, just happened on the link again. Worth the read.

[buffythevampirelover]

Fun Facts About Me! (Tag Game)

Taking @the-grim-and-sanguine 's open tag! Thanks!

A Scent You Love: Vanilla extract and (chlorine) swimming pools

What's Something You're Looking Forward To This Week? My english class's last class WOO! Also on Thursday my friends are coming over to watch movies and draw names for secret santa!

What's A Book You're Currently Reading? I just started reading It Came From The Closet which is an anthology about queerness and horror movies, all written by queer/trans authors!

What's A Game You're Currently Playing? I don't game much, but I am obsessed with Stardew Valley! I just reconnected with a friend from high school who moved a couple years ago and now we play SDV together :)

What's The Most Recent Movie You Watched? In my film class we watched parts of The Godfather but on my own I just watched Happiest Season

Are You Watching/Listening To Anything Shows? I just started Everything Now on netflix! Its good so far

Favourite Season? Autumn! Always!

What's Something You've Learned Recently? About groundwater, caves, and karsts in my geology class

Have You Had Any Water Lately? Well I'm drinking tea right now which is kinda water... But I also bring a water bottle with me to school so I have some nearby!

Tagging @little-mouse-gardens @laplumedemaureen @kaylinalexanderbooks @surroundedbypearls and anyone else who sees this and wants to join! No pressure <3

#tag game #open tag #writeblr

[currentclimate]

The Interconnected Disaster Risks report, published ahead of COP28 climate talks next month, identified accelerating rates of extinction, groundwater depletion, glacial melt and extreme heat as the major interconnected threats. It warned that 1 million plants and animals could be wiped out "within decades", with the loss of key species to "trigger cascading extinctions of dependent species" and raise the likelihood of ecosystem collapse. Many of the world's biggest aquifers are already depleting faster than they can be replenished, with Saudi Arabia, India and the United States already facing grave risks. Run-offs from glacial melt are also set to decline. "Heat is causing us to extract more of that groundwater because of drought," said Caitlyn Eberle, another lead author. "Many of those glaciers in the Rocky Mountains, the Himalayas and the Andes feed into these rivers and groundwater systems, so as those glaciers disappear there is less water available."

#climate crisis

[professor-amaryllis]

Professor, as a scientist myself, I try to avoid using the word “impossible”. Please consider this a friendly, or at least well-intentioned, reminder that a plant spontaneously producing an element not found in its environment is extraordinarily unlikely. I sincerely doubt there are any naturally formed nuclear reactors nearby.

It is theoretically possible that all the cadmium was extracted from the soil and groundwater, and is currently contained in biological media, but the time that would have taken beggars belief. I appreciate your willingness to see the best in people, but the scenario that seems most likely to me is that the poisoning was no accident, or at least not a naturally-occurring one.

That is... something I have considered. I do not want to make any judgements or make any sort of accusations whatsoever until i have ruled out a few more things but well, I have found a few incidents of harassment in the past when i was doing a bit of background research on the area. It seems that not everyone is so happy that Thomas refuses to sell some of the forested land surrounding the area to be developed. And then there are the people who believe raising Chansey for eggs is unethical as well as those who believe farming pokemon itself is cruel. It's a ridiculous notion, really but these people do exist.

I have already had one unusual encounter with a man yesterday morning. he met me outside the hotel I was renting, called me by name and everything and tried to not so casually bring up my work at this farm. I of course did not share anything with him and I do not know exactly who he represented, but it was odd nonetheless.

#pokemon irl #pokeblogging #ask #researcher alexander #farmer boy #poisoning arc

[lovingfunthing]

People have told me, that's not love you're feeling, it's infatuation; you can't fall in love quickly, it's not really love; it's just an illusion, not the real thing. Sometimes they are right.

I actually do believe in love at first conversation, however. Not first look...that's just objectification...but yeah. It can happen.

Maybe it's not a lasting love. Maybe it's a love that comes and goes. Sometimes, love takes a while to develop. There are many types of love.

Personally, I feel love for a lot of people. I think that scares people, intimidates them and seems volatile. But it's really, a gentle and healing thing. It is the opposite of wanting to control someone.

Love isn't falling in love with a whole person, it's you feeling a bond of attraction and commitment and care for, your perception of that person. Which, hopefully is accurate, but is always incomplete. Someone might let you in more and more, and so the love deepens.

But it's not necessarily real, or not real, based on how quickly or slowly it develops. It often is finite in our lived experience, but love itself is theoretically infinite. However, we still have a shortage of actual love in the world, and people don't really do anything to change that even though we could all do that together if we tried.

***

How do we talk about love? Do we talk about it? We might be so tangled up with our preconceptions, we need a simile or metaphor or analogy, to really unpack things and see it clearly.

***

Love that happens between people, their connection, maybe it is rather like a well.

Let's see. Well, it gives you a scarce resource you need to survive. its a portal to what is stuck underground beneath a cold and unyielding earth, and it takes a varying amount of labour to get ito produce that resource, which can be refilled over time by the earth if treated gently and generously only taking what you need, or extracted and exploited til it's gone.

Sometimes, you look and already see a depth to it, all the way from the top of the well. You won't really know what everything feels like at the bottom of the well unless you actually get in there and check it out up close, or how refreshing the water is til you drink it, but, nonetheless, you can see it's a deep well even though you're at the surface, because the water is clear.

Sometimes the water is hard and calcified, but pure, and you can't see how deep it is, but it's still good to drink. In fact, it gives you other minerals you need in your life.

You might have one well, but you know it's not such a bad idea to know where a few are. You might even carry water to a neighbor who has a dry well. You never want somebody to let any well get damaged, or the water to be poisoned, because while you can't see it directly, the earth's aquafiers are all interconnected, and so groundwater poisoned in one well will share that toxin to many other wells.

These days, most people don't use wells. They just turn on the tap, swipe and twist it left or right, and what they need is delivered quickly and easily, without any need to worry about where it comes from. Some people say it's got fluoride in it, and it's somebody else's job to make sure nobody gets sick from what you drink, but it's also sold to you by a company. Often, it feels like you don't really value it the way that somebody with a well does.

Despite water's seeming abstract infinitude, we are actually increasingly in a drought. While we could probably solve that issue by purifying all the undrinkable ocean's worth of saltwater, or not wasting what we already pumped up from the well...we know there's, in practice, a serious crisis in the world, and so wells are important.

Still, most people aren't interested to go back to wells, or at least develop a relationship beyond the purely commodified norm with what provides them this totally necessary condition for life. They want other people to take care of it, amd they don't really want any responsibility for or to it.

There are many people who die from a lack of it, and there are evil people who want to poison it for profit, or even take it away from people and keep it for themselves, so there are and will be wars about it. Yet, the apathetic attitude is stronger than ever.

So if you know all this, when you find a nice well close to your house, you really want to cherish it. You might be nervous about the water quality or the depth of the well, but sometimes you just know it's a good well that can give you and your neighbors what you need. Amd sometimes you just get a good feeling, even before you look into it, because it's so clear and you still can't see the bottom.

The best neighbors share it, view the well as something nobody should try to violently keep to themselves, and something everyone has to take care of. People should be grateful for the well, and shouldn't try to pump water out of one without their neighbors knowing. People should share the well with people they can trust to keep it healthy and full.

#love #relationships #relationship anarchy

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Chromite Ore Processing Residue (COPR)

During the production of chromium, one of the waste products is known as COPR, for chromite ore processing residue. The amount of COPR can vary from process to process, but comes out in the form of a solid mud that still contains some chromium. One form that chromium takes in COPR, at up to 30% of the residue, is known as hexavalent chromium, or Cr(VI).

While it is still used in applications today, hexavalent chromium, in COPR or otherwise, is a toxic substance, and difficult to extract from the residue to be either used or reduced. Historically, storage and disposal of untreated COPR often failed to meet environmental regulations (or predated them), risking leakage into groundwater and soil.

Sources/Further Reading: (Image source - 2021 COPR article) (2015 COPR article) (2014 COPR article) (1991 COPR article) (Maryland COPR disposal sites) (OSHA Cr(VI)) (CDC Cr(VI)) (Wikipedia Cr(VI)) (DCCEEW Cr(VI)) (IMTS 2022 Cr(VI) news article)

#Materials Science #Science #Chromium #Waste #Toxicity #WasteWednesday #2024Daily

[probablyasocialecologist]

It’s worth taking a step back to emphasise just how extraordinary the lack of access to water is. There is not a shortage of water. Sure, regionally speaking, there are shortages, but not at a global level. It also doesn’t take a genius to get access to water or move it from A to B. The UN estimates it costs $60 to $70 per year per person to get the infrastructure in place for potable water and sanitation to everyone. A sum that pales in comparison with that spent bailing out the banks in 2008, for example. So it’s in that context that we should look at these new technologies. Desalination of water has been around for a long time. You boil salty water, it’s that simple. However, what has happened over the past 20 or 30 years or so, is desalination is increasingly seen as an environmentally friendly, safe and cheap way to get almost an abundant supply of water. Sea water is in great abundance, it is not owned by anyone for the time being, you can suck up as much as you want of it and not pay for it. Of course, desalination at scale is not ecologically friendly. Desalination takes a gargantuan amount of energy. It’s true that the costs per unit for energy production have gone down, but it’s still very energy intensive. It also takes significant infrastructure to suck the water from the sea, which has an adverse impact on marine wildlife and ecologies, as well as producing highly saline and toxic leftover waste. There’s no way to recycle this so it often ends up back in the sea or stored on land, in barrels somewhere. These technologies are also often used to defuse or, more accurately, sidestep political disputes. Take Spain, for example. Water access and distribution is difficult in the south of Spain, while people from Catalonia or Aragon generally speaking don’t want to share their groundwater with those from other regions. Desalination is an easy answer. Let’s get to the sea, extract free water, there’s no contestation. This all falls under what I’ve called a ‘productionist logic’, we need to get more of the stuff to carry on doing what we are already doing. This perpetuates a logic of reproduction that does not consider the structures of demand: who’s using it, under what conditions etc… It helps us escape considering the contradictions of current demands.

#water #commons #desalination #poverty #inequality