The Stream, February 20, 2025: Trump Orders Test Great Lakes Collaboration; Indian Religious Gathering Prompts Water Quality Concerns

Rainstorms sweep across Toronto in June 2024. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue

YOUR GLOBAL RUNDOWN

• The amount of water glaciers are losing each year this century would satisfy the world’s water needs for three decades, according to a new study.
• The rate of dam removals in the American Northeast has increased in the past several years, reopening thousands of river miles and improving water quality.
• In India, leaders at the world’s largest religious gathering are promoting water and environmental sustainability.
• Wyoming legislators have proposed turning control of the waters which flow through the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes’ land over to non-native farmers.

— Christian Thorsberg, Interim Stream Editor

Fresh: From the Great Lakes Region

Binational Partnership Strained: American and Canadian scientists are finding their ability to collaborate on Great Lakes projects and management decisions significantly impeded by President Trump’s new federal orders, CBC reports. Routine workday tasks, such as holding online meetings between scientists from both nations, now require clearance. Even the sharing of emails and data, some scientists report, have slowed to the point that certain research projects have been postponed. 

Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now at Detroit Public Television, Michigan Public and The Narwhal work together to report on the most pressing threats to the Great Lakes region’s water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work here.

• Tackling environmental racism in Chemical Valley — The Narwhal
• Snow is making a big comeback in Michigan this year, with more to come — Bridge Michigan
• New York’s proposed PFAS legislation and other Great Lakes states latest efforts to combat ‘forever chemicals’ — Great Lakes Now
• Gone a century, Arctic grayling return soon to Michigan. Can they survive? — Michigan Public

The Lead

Maha Kumbh Mela, a six-week Hindu pilgrimage in northern India and the world’s largest human gathering, has brought more than 500 million people to the Ganges and other rivers since mid-January, Deutsche Welle reports. As part of the festival, devotees bathe in the Sangam — “the confluence of rivers considered holy by Hindus,” BBC reports. They might then drink a handful of water.  

A government report released prior to the festival raised concerns that these waters were contaminated with both elevated amounts of faecal bacteria and untreated sewage, though the chief minister of India’s Uttar Pradesh state, where Kumbh Mela takes place, refuted these results and insisted the waters were safe.  

The influx of millions of people to the region poses significant environmental challenges, not just for the possible health of these sacred waters but for the strain on other waterways and habitats affected by water withdrawals, pollution, and stressed waste management systems. According to Deutsche Welle, religious leaders and faith-based organizations have begun promoting climate action, “bridging ancient wisdom with modern sustainability.”

Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue

• Opinion: The President’s Plastic Trigger — President Trump delights in alarming opponents and aiding friends in polluting industries
• Have You Seen This Fish Thief? — A new film spotlights the sea lamprey, also known as “Dracula of the Lakes.”

This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers

6.542 trillion

The number of metric tons of ice lost, cumulatively between 2000 and 2023, by the world’s glaciers, according to a new study from the Universities of Edinburgh and Zurich, the Guardian reports. The 273 billion tonnes of freshwater that melt each year is the “equivalent of 30 years of water consumption by the entire global population.” As a result of the melting, average sea level has risen by 18 millimeters, about 0.7 inches. There are substantial regional differences in melting, with central Europe’s glaciers losing an alarming 36 percent of their volume this century and Antarctic and subarctic glaciers losing 5 percent. In total, the world’s glaciers have lost 5 percent of their collective volume over the past 23 years — meltwater which two billion people depend on for drinking, sanitation, and farming. 

30,000

The approximate number of dams which currently stand in waterways in the American Northeast, though hundreds have been removed from the region this century, allowing the health and water quality of streams, rivers, and aquatic ecosystems to significantly improve, Yale Environment 360 reports. “American Rivers estimates that 85 percent of U.S. dams are unnecessary at best and pose risks to public safety at worst, should they collapse and flood downstream communities,” according to the magazine.

On the Radar

The Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes — both recognized as sovereign nations by the federal government — are fighting for their water rights, Inside Climate News reports. The Big Wind River runs through their land in central Wyoming, a region whose future water security, amidst a changing climate, is heavily uncertain. Drought, wildfire, and rising temperatures all forecast to negatively impact surface and groundwater availability over the coming years. This environmental threat was exacerbated politically in 2023, when “U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Republican and Wyoming’s only House member,” proposed turning control of parts of the river and the Bull Lake Dam, which augments its flow, to non-native irrigators — a move which would violate a treaty both Tribes signed with the federal government in 1868. As the state grows increasingly thirsty, and as the Trump administration settles into power, the communities worry their river will be taken from them. 

Christian Thorsberg

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer from Chicago. He is passionate about climate and cultural phenomena that often appear slow or invisible, and he examines these themes in his journalism, poetry, and fiction.