June 13, 2023 Fresh is a biweekly newsletter from Circle of Blue that unpacks the biggest international, state, and local policy news stories facing the Great Lakes region today. Sign up for Fresh: A Great Lakes Policy Briefing, straight to your inbox, every other Tuesday. — Christian Thorsberg, Interim Fresh Editor This Week’s Watersheds The Litchfield Wetlands Nature Preserve, a new protected area in Medina County, Ohio, has opened to the public.  Huge amounts of lime chemical byproduct, which have blighted Montague, Michigan, and its nearby water sources for decades, may finally be ..read more

The Rundown NOAA foresees a smaller low-oxygen dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. The Army Corps launches a five-year study to inform the management of the lower Mississippi River. The Army Corps also reevaluates water infrastructure needs for Everglades restoration and revokes a water quality permit for a proposed copper-nickel mine in Minnesota. The EPA allocates funds to fix the water system in Jackson, Mississippi. Public comment period extended for proposed changes to agency cost-benefit analysis. And lastly, the Bureau of Reclamation updates stakeholders on the Colorado River. “The next ..read more

Booming metro areas test the limits of water supply and growth. Homes abut the Central Arizona Project canal in Stetson Valley, a development about 20 miles north of downtown Phoenix. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue – June 7, 2023 Mark Marlowe, who directs the water supply for fast-growing Castle Rock, a Denver suburb, has a dim view of lawns. Irrigating grass in summer consumes 40 percent of Castle Rock’s water. And unlike water used indoors, outdoor water cannot be recycled. Marlowe is not reticent in articulating his disdain. Earlier this spring ..read more

The Rundown The debt limit standoff opened the door to changes in project permits. The Bureau of Reclamation has up to $40 million for projects to reduce salt in the Colorado River. There is little change in the latest Lake Erie harmful algal bloom forecast. Federal wildfire forecast shows significant fire potential this summer in Cascades, Great Lakes states. Water bills introduced in Congress include regulating water rights sales and extending water infrastructure repayment terms for western farms and cities. The Bureau of Reclamation begins studying options for relocating a section of the ..read more

May 30, 2023 Fresh is a biweekly newsletter from Circle of Blue that unpacks the biggest international, state, and local policy news stories facing the Great Lakes region today. Sign up for Fresh: A Great Lakes Policy Briefing, straight to your inbox, every other Tuesday. — Christian Thorsberg, Interim Fresh Editor This Week’s Watersheds The Great Lakes ice season ended with the fourth-lowest average ice cover in half a century.  A $30 million EPA grant program will fund environmental justice projects in historically underserved Great Lakes communities. A recent land purchase will exte ..read more

In Iowa, a Tale of Politics, Power, and Contaminated Water Lawmakers silence Chris Jones, a prominent University of Iowa water quality researcher. By Keith Schneider, Circle of Blue – May 25, 2023 IOWA CITY, IOWA – Here in the heart of US farm country, the wretched quality of Iowa waterways is a well-known lament. Farm fields laden with synthetic fertilizers and manure produce bounties of over 2 billion bushels of corn each year, but those same fields also produce a torrent of run-off that contaminates virtually every mile of the state’s streams and rivers and every acre of lakes and po ..read more

Eqypt and its cities like Cairo rely almost exclusively on the Nile for water supplies, yet experts say any unrest upriver in Sudan will have repercussions on Egypt’s water security. J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue   Sun-baked fields and dusty reservoirs dot the landscape of southern Spain. Travel east in the Mediterranean and Tunisia is cutting urban water service at night to conserve supplies amid a harsh, multi-year drought. In the Horn of Africa, meanwhile, aid agencies distribute emergency food rations to hungry families after several seasons of failed rains. Access to water – or ..read more

Lake Mead, the largest reservoir on the Colorado River. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue YOUR GLOBAL RUNDOWN Arizona, Nevada, and California offer a plan to conserve water from the shrinking Colorado River.  More than a dozen people were killed in floods amid extreme rain in northeastern Italy.  Less than two weeks of water supplies remain in the main reservoir for Montevideo, Uruguay. New forecasts reveal that by 2035, if trends continue, Iraq will be able to meet only 15 percent of its water needs. Toronto’s Don River, declared dead for over a half-century, is on the ro ..read more

The Rundown The EPA wants to expand the number of coal ash facilities regulated to protect water bodies from contaminants. Lawmakers in Congress introduce bills on hydropower reform, mining law reform, and water technology adoption. The EPA orders Baltimore to protect its drinking water reservoirs from animal waste. A USDA survey finds that nitrate is the most concerning pollutant for groundwater management organizations. Federal agencies update their seasonal wildfire outlook. The USGS releases interactive, online maps of Arizona groundwater levels. The Bureau of Reclamation reports on consu ..read more

Restoration projects in the Kissimmee River Basin north of Lake Okeechobee are part of larger efforts to reduce nutrient pollution and send clean water south to the Everglades. Photo courtesy Brent Anderson / South Florida Water Management District via Flickr Creative Commons YOUR GLOBAL RUNDOWN Public hiking paths have opened along the Han River, a biodiverse estuary which flows through the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.  Morocco, which has one of the world’s lowest water resources per capita, boosts its water funding by billions of dollars. In south and central Fl ..read more