dam

A dam collapse at a diamond mine in Jagersfontein, South Africa, on September 11, 2022, released sludge that poured across the landscape, destroying homes, inundating rivers and grazing land, and injuring dozens.Nearly one month after the collapse of a tailings dam, the South African mining town Jagersfontein and nearby water systems remained capped with muddy debris.On September 11, 2022, at a diamond mine in Jagersfontein, South Africa, a dam collapsed, releasing a watery mixture of mining waste known as tailings. The…

It’s human nature to mark big-number anniversaries, but there’s a centennial looming just ahead that Californians — and other Westerners — might not want to celebrate.It’s the 100th anniversary of the Colorado River Compact, a seven-state agreement that was signed Nov. 24, 1922. That evening, in the Ben Hur Room of Santa Fe’s Palace of the Governors, using the lapboard on which Gen. Lew Wallace had written his biblical epic 40 years earlier while serving as New Mexico’s territorial governor, representatives of six of the…

The US’s largest water reservoir, Lake Mead at the Hoover Dam, is in very, very bad shape. How bad is it? New satellite images from NASA show just how much the reservoir’s footprint has shrunk over the past two decades — and the difference between July 2000 and July 2022 is stark. Water levels at Lake Mead are at a historic low — the reservoir hasn’t been this empty since 1937 when it was being filled for the first time. It’s currently at just 27 percent capacity. The last time it was close to full capacity was 1999,…

The tightening grip of climate change on our planet is revealing secrets buried for millennia.As waters and ice recede under warming conditions, the traces of people and civilizations long gone from the mortal realm emerge. In recent months, Iraq has been hit particularly hard, battered by extreme drought, with the Mosul reservoir shrinking as water is extracted to keep crops from drying.  Amid this crisis, the ruins of an ancient city, submerged for decades, are once again on dry land. Since the dam was created in the…