Greg Pierce

Cyprus appeals to residents to cut water use by two minutes a day amid drought Island’s reservoirs hit record lows even before tourist season starts as Cypriots are warned ‘every drop counts’

“The mean per capita consumption of water in Europe is 120 litres per person per day, but in some areas of Cyprus, being that much hotter, we have mean per capita consumption of 500 litres per day”

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

Salty, Oily Drinking Water Left Sores in Their Mouths. Oklahoma Refused to Find Out Why. State regulators discovered strong signs of oil pollution, including high levels of salt and toxic metals, in one family’s drinking water. But for two years, they repeatedly delayed basic tests to fin...

www.propublica.org/article/okla...

DC Water CEO addresses community in wake of massive sewage spill - WTOP News DC Water CEO David Gaddis pledged a full recovery effort after a massive sewer pipe break spilled hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Potomac River — the largest wastewater spill in...

Analysis: “the largest spill of wastewater in U.S. history” is not good

wtop.com/dc/2026/02/d...

Trump's EPA Rollbacks Will Reverberate for 'Decades' The agency’s planned repeal of a cornerstone of US climate rules is part of an aggressive deregulatory agenda whose effects on the environment will outlast the president.

Trump is shrinking the EPA more quickly & aggressively than ever before, culminating in this week's move to rescind the crucial "endangerment finding" underpinning key regulations of planet-warming pollution.

Here's what it all means (a gift link @bloomberg.com): www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

A dashboard for tracking FEMA major disaster declarations My last post described how presidential disaster declarations are an important indicator of how the 2nd Trump Administration intends to govern disasters.

Want to know how many disaster declarations are being made under the 2nd Trump Administration, and how long they are taking? I made a simple dashboard to help: andrewrumbach.substack.com/p/a-dashboar...

Babe, wake up, new sarcastic but entirely worthwhile internet abbreviation just dropped

Oh my god

Water, Fire, and Finance: Investigating How To Pay for Resilient Water Supply Systems in the Face of Changing Fire Risks | The Confluence Image

A look back at what we discussed at our water- fire – finance workshop a few weeks ago, and what you’ll see in our full report in a few months

ucanr.edu/blog/conflue...

Record snow drought in Western US raises concern for a spring of water shortages and wildfires Except for California, most Western states are experiencing the worst snow drought in decades not because of dry conditions but really warm temperatures that change snow to rain.

A record snow drought with unprecedented heat is hitting most of the American West, depleting future water supplies, making it more vulnerable to wildfires and hurting winter tourism and recreation. #cawater apnews.com/article/west...

Yeah, glancing through I don’t really know what it amounts to. Maybe I’ll ask Nicola.

Thoughts?

Wow

New water pipelines run at least >$1m per mile, so…what’s not to like?

Read the latest Weather Ready research for insights on developing more holistic, multi-hazard interventions and educational campaigns for wildfire preparedness and response: bit.ly/3NPtIcO

In this case, there is also a theoretical either/or, but $800 per month more doesn't exactly feel like a way forward.

More and more of these cases will pop up across the West in next years and decades

This is one of the most wild stories in CA (Western) water.

Not unlike Buckeye, AZ, you have a utility, albeit a very unconventional one (Union Pacific Railroad), saying it will stop serving a certain community, with no viable alternative emerging.

SJV WATER: Kings County groundwater agency threatens to fine landowners $1,000 a day and shut off wells if they don’t register and report extractions By Monserrat Solis, SJV Water The Southwest Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) held its first meeting in six months and covered a lot of ground including setting a policy to fine landowners...

The Southwest Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) held its first meeting in six months and covered a lot of ground including setting a policy to fine landowners $1,000 a day for not registering their wells and vowing to sue a neighboring GSA. #cawater mavensnotebook.com/2026/02/04/s...

(LA taxpayers will be on the hook for the first $270 million in cost overruns if the LA 2028 Olympics goes over budget.

CA taxpayers will then be on the hook for the next $270 million.

After that, LA taxpayers will again be on the hook for any remaining cost overruns.)

I've spent the past couple weeks combing through data from dozens of power plant sites where coal ash disposal contaminated drinking water supplies, and whenever I work on a project like this I start to feel like it's a miracle that any of us are still alive

The Trump administration exempts new nuclear reactors from environmental review The announcement comes just days after NPR revealed the administration had secretly rewritten safety and environmental standards.

On Monday, Trump administration exempted new nuclear reactors from environmental review

www.npr.org/2026/02/02/n...

Millions of Delhi residents lost water for days. Some say it’s still toxic | CNN Ravinder Kumar wades through ankle-deep sludge every day to leave his home in Sharma Enclave in northwest Delhi – yet inside the brick tenement, he does not have a drop to drink.

www.cnn.com/2026/01/31/i...

There are no state or federal programs which provide relief on an even semi-consistent basis, with federal programs in doubt entirely

I’m not sure what we’re expecting to happen when we don’t provide financial support to what are effectively small businesses w 80% fixed costs which have lost much of their customer base, and don’t have other revenue sources.

for us Americans, that's 98°F at night and 120°F in the day

Ukrainians brace for -20C despite energy truce: 'It will be a catastrophe' Already facing electricity cuts, civilians are struggling to keep warm in their own homes as temperatures are set to plummet.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Fossil energy minimum viable scale Unseen infrastructural threats to safety and decarbonization may arise as fossil energy systems are phased out

New from @gruberte.bsky.social and I in @science.org: The energy transition is at risk, and energy models are missing the threat. Fossil energy networks from oil to coal to gas have minimum viable scales of operation, and those thresholds are closer than we think:

www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....
💡🔌

“The order echoes the administration’s January 2025 action, which blamed California’s environmental and water‑management policies for intensifying wildfires and authorized federal agencies to override state water restrictions and accelerate environmental waivers.” www.usatoday.com/story/news/c...

"At your earliest convenience, but no later than February 1"

LOL

This is an important point. The federal government has *chosen* to withhold heat aid in frigid temperatures.

It would certainly help if the federal government had not gutted LIHEAP, the key protection nationally to provide financial support for affording heating in homes.