Russians plan to drill into untouched Antarctic lake

The world's seventh-largest freshwater lake is locked under a giant Antarctic ice sheet and has never been exposed to human contact -- but Russian scientists have drilled within 425 feet of it, and, despite pleas from scientists and environmentalists, intend to drill in all the way over the next two summers. Lake Vostok, approximately 5,000 square miles in area and over half a mile deep, likely contains unique aquatic life, perhaps thanks to the presence of geothermal vents. "At these vents you can get tube worms meters high. ... you could probably get some pretty bizarre things," says Antarctic researcher John Priscu. "You could even have fish." Or perhaps you could have dead fish, if the lake becomes contaminated by the kerosene and chemicals that lubricate the over-two-mile-deep drill hole. The Russian Antarctic Expedition considers its drilling legit, having cleared its proposal through the Antarctic Treaty's environmental approval system -- which has no capacity to veto.

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Russian president changes route of Siberian pipeline to protect lake

Last month, we reported that a Siberia-to-Asia oil pipeline backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin was set to be built half a mile from the world's deepest lake, home to hundreds of unique species. Well, we've been Putin our place: yesterday, the Russian prez ordered the pipeline rerouted to avoid Lake Baikal by at least 25 miles. Widespread public protests and opposition from Russian scientists and green groups likely had, well, nothing to do with it -- this is Putin we're talking about. More likely the dramatic reversal was theater to impress the G8, which he's chairing this year. Nonetheless, enviros -- who had feared that an oil spill in the seismically unstable area around Baikal could, you know, damage the lake somehow -- celebrated the decision. Said a Greenpeace spokesperson, "We ... see it as a sign that the government does not only listen to those people who have political and business power." Mm-hmm.

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Russia to build oil pipeline within half-mile of world's deepest lake

A 2,550-mile-long oil pipeline is set to be built within 900 yards of the world's deepest lake. And really, what could go wrong? Lake Baikal -- home to a variety of unique species of flora and fauna and over 20 percent of the planet's unfrozen freshwater -- has the misfortune to lie along the cheapest route for Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft to expand the country's oil exports to Asia. Scientists have warned of erosion, water pollution, and the possibility that earthquakes, which happen regularly in the area, could rupture the pipeline and cause oil to flow into the lake. A government commission of experts that originally rejected the plan on environmental grounds was increased by 34 members and asked to review the project again, after which they approved it. Coincidentally, the pipeline is backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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U.N. urges decisive action to save Africa's lakes

Africa's 650-plus lakes are degrading at an astonishing rate, says the U.N., and protecting them is crucial to restoring the continent's health and boosting its prosperity. The U.N. Environment Program's new "Africa's Lakes: An Atlas of Environmental Change" compares recent and past satellite images of the water bodies, revealing massive changes. Lake Victoria, Africa's largest freshwater lake, has dropped by over three feet in the past decade; Lake Chad has diminished nearly 90 percent. The report blames climate change, deforestation, population growth, and poor irrigation practices -- up to 90 percent of Africa's water is used in farming, with 40 to 60 percent of that lost to seepage and evaporation -- as well as natural rainfall cycles. The images should "ring a warning around the world that, if we are to overcome poverty and meet internationally agreed development goals by 2015, the sustainable management of Africa's lakes must be part of the equation," says UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer.

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Norton won't reduce water releases from Lake Powell

Following a year's worth of unsuccessful negotiations between governors of seven parched Western states, Interior Secretary Gale Norton stepped in yesterday to make a decision on how to divvy up the much-coveted water of the Colorado River. A winter of heavy precipitation and subsequent spring thaws have made the debate over how much water to divert to the river's two largest reservoirs -- Lake Powell to the north and Lake Mead to the south -- even more heated. Upper-basin states Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico argued that water levels were finally high enough to decrease water flow out of Lake Powell, which is only one-third full after years of drought. But Arizona, Nevada, and California countered that such reductions would decrease their ability to draw water and power downstream. Norton's final decision? Leave things as is, a situation that benefits downstream states. To which Arizona, Nevada, and California replied: "Face!"

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Proposed Alaskan mine may threaten salmon wonderland

Near the shores of vast Lake Iliamna in southern Alaska, locals are worried that a huge proposed open-pit mine at the region's headwaters could imperil legendary salmon runs. The story is familiar enough: an economically depressed, mineral-rich area gets courted by slick mining-company officials promising jobs and little-to-no ecological damage from its proposed 14-square-mile, $1.5 billion mine complex. Stakes are high on both sides. In one corner, Northern Dynasty Mines Inc., thirsty for what's billed as the largest gold deposit in North America and the second-largest copper deposit; in the other corner, a small Native Alaskan town subsisting primarily on the area's fish, wary of the company's claims but hungry for jobs. Caught somewhere in the middle is "one of the most special places for salmon anywhere," as University of Washington biologist Thomas Quinn calls it. Ultimate approval of the mine is up to state and federal officials.

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Onondaga Nation sues for land rights in New York state

The Onondaga Nation earlier this month filed a lawsuit claiming ownership of some 3,100 square miles of New York state, including Onondaga Lake in northwest Syracuse -- a large body of water to which the community claims to have ancestral connection. That lake also happens to be one of the most polluted in the country; once a source of trout and medicines, the lake was used for decades as a dump site for industrial wastes and is now a Superfund site awaiting cleanup. In their lawsuit, the Onondaga are not asking to uproot current residents or for monetary compensation; instead, they want the right to influence major policy decisions regarding the environment of their ancestral lands, as well as increased agricultural and housing opportunities and the ability to protect ancestors' gravesites. The Onondagas feel they were not properly consulted before the state's announcement of a $448 million lake cleanup proposal, which they believe is inadequate. "This is our home, this is where our history is, and it was treated as a trash dump," said Brad Powless, an Onondaga chief.

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Owens Lake, on the eastern flanks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in southeastern California, was, at its peak, a 200-square-mile perennial lake. Located at the terminus of the Owens River, it held water continuously for at least 800,000 years. It is now an extreme example of the destabilizing effect of surface-water extraction in desert regions.

Click here to start slide show.

Beginning in 1913, the Owens River was diverted to bring water to the city of Los Angeles, and by the mid-1920s Owens Lake was dry. For decades, the lake's dry bed produced enormous amounts of windblown dust. Indeed, it became the single largest source of particulate-matter pollution in the United States, by one estimate emitting almost a million tons annually. The dust contains carcinogens such as nickel, cadmium, and arsenic, as well as sodium, chlorine, iron, calcium, potassium, sulfur, aluminum, and magnesium.

During dust storms, air pollution around the dry lake bed has reached 25 times the level acceptable under national clean-air standards. The dust travels both north and south on turbulent winds channeled through the Owens Valley by the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west and the White-Inyo Range to the east; the toxic dust has been tracked by satellite some 155 miles to the south into the Los Angeles area.

The city of Los Angeles owns thousands of acres of Owens Valley lands, along with the rights to the water in the Owens River. (Remember the movie Chinatown?) The river still flows through the upper part of the valley, but is then diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct 51 miles upstream from the point where it used to enter Owens Lake.

Under California law, the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District has been given the authority to order Los Angeles to undertake reasonable measures to mitigate the air-quality impacts of its water-gathering activities. In 1998, after decades of legal wrangling, the city began implementing dust-control measures to abate the toxic dust storms that come off the barren lake bed. These controls include the shallow flooding of thousands of acres along the eastern edge of the lake with a small percentage of the water that is diverted, as well as reclaiming some of the saline lake-bed soils and establishing fields of salt-tolerant grass irrigated with hi-tech buried drip systems. Los Angeles continues to implement these dust controls and will complete the $400 million project by the end of 2006.

The Lake Project comprises my aerial images of Owens Lake, taken between 2001 and 2004. Viewed from the air, vestiges of the lake appear as a river of blood, a microchip, a bisected vein, or a galaxy's map. It is this contemporary version of the sublime that I find compelling. In The Lake Project, the lake has become the locus of water's absence. The lake is a negation of itself, a void. To grow the city of Los Angeles is to deplete, starve, or implode the body of water that was once Owens Lake, so The Lake Project images serve, in a sense, as the lake's autopsy. In nearly every image from The Lake Project, water is harnessed for some use, and in the process it is in some manner manipulated or destroyed, its presence denied. This is not to say that it has been stripped of its inherent beauty. But its beauty has been subjugated by its use, and while its physical condition may be thrilling to behold -- water in shades of red, green, amber, and purple -- it is a beauty born of environmental degradation. There is a sense of both seduction and betrayal with these images, and the viewer is ultimately complicit in their absorption by this toxic site.

This past fall, I was commissioned by SF Camerawork (a nonprofit arts organization in San Francisco) to create a public art piece consisting of 12 billboards which focused on The Lake Project material, as part of their current exhibit "Monument Recall: Public Space and Public Memory." The billboards and links to further material on the history and the demise of Owens Lake can be found at lakeproject.org. In addition, an oversized monograph book, The Lake Project, was released this fall by Nazraeli Press, with an introduction by the curator Robert A. Sobieszek of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Click here to start the slide show.

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Lake Powell is drying up; Glen Canyon is coming back

Lake Powell is dropping by a foot every four days, thanks to ongoing drought in the West -- and many enviros couldn't be happier about it. Veteran conservation leader David Brower called the completion of Glen Canyon dam in 1963, and the subsequent drowning of the canyon and its many side canyons to create Lake Powell, the greatest disappointment of his life. Since then, many activists have been arguing, futilely, for the draining of the lake. But what activism hasn't been able to accomplish, Mother Nature is. Since 1999, Lake Powell has lost more than 60 percent of its water, dropping 129 feet. Where there was once 250 square miles of flat water there are now 131, and as the lake recedes, plants and wildlife are returning and many side canyons are becoming accessible by foot. Most hydrologists agree that, short of a massive and unexpected series of rainy years, the lake will never be back to its former levels.

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Most U.S. Lakes and Waterways Contaminated with Mercury, EPA Says

U.S. EPA head honcho Mike Leavitt struggled yesterday to put a positive spin on the agency's annual report on fish advisories, despite the grim news that virtually every body of freshwater in the country may be contaminated with mercury, which poses health risks to fetuses and children. Every state except Alaska and Wyoming issued warnings about mercury-contaminated fish last year. More than a third of America's lakes and almost a quarter of its miles of rivers are officially covered by fish advisories, but as Leavitt acknowledged, "Mercury is everywhere." The EPA attributes the increase in advisories to better monitoring, not worse pollution, noting that mercury pollution actually declined between 1990 and 1999 (the last year for which figures were available). The report is already adding fuel to the debate over the EPA's forthcoming mercury regulations, expected to be based on a cap-and-trade system that enviros say would be weak and too slow to produce results.

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Great Salt Lake Is Shrinking, and Some ATV Owners See a New Playground

If you're feeling a little low today, just consider the fate of Utah's Great Salt Lake -- which is feeling even lower, we guarantee. Following five years of drought, the famed lake is experiencing near-record lows and is dropping at a rate of about an inch per week. As a result, the surrounding wetlands -- prime insect and bird habitat -- are shrinking. Just as alarming, all-terrain vehicle enthusiasts are taking advantage of the low water levels to illegally ride right over the lake bed and onto protected Antelope Island, home to the eponymous creatures as well as bighorn sheep and buffalo. Conservationists worry that in addition to damaging the fragile ecosystem, the ATV scofflaws will frighten the animals into fleeing from the island.

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Central Europe's Largest Lake Is Shrinking

According to legend, Hungary's Lake Balaton is constantly replenished by a young girl weeping in a church in the middle of its waters. Now, though, Central Europe's largest lake is shrinking, and experts say the problem isn't a happier lake lady; it's global warming. Following four hot summers in a row and lower-than-average annual rainfalls, millions of gallons of lakewater have disappeared, exposing mudflats and forcing visitors to the 231-square-mile lake -- one of Hungary's most popular tourist attractions -- to walk far out from the original water's edge for a swim. Environmentalists, climate scientists, and Hungarian politicians warn that those changes could spell disaster for the nation's tourism-dependent economy as well as for the lake's fragile ecosystem.

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Lake Tanganyika Under Threat from Climate Change

The ecology of Lake Tanganyika -- Africa's second-largest body of water and site of the famed encounter between Henry Stanley and David Livingstone -- is under siege due to global climate change, according to studies by two independent teams of scientists. The scientists have found that rising air temperatures have reduced the lake's nutrient load and increased its water temperature, resulting in decreasing fish stocks. Local fishing yields have fallen by over one-third in the last three decades, with further declines predicted. That's an economic and health catastrophe for area residents, who have traditionally gotten between 25 and 40 percent of their protein from the lake's fish. Tanganyika is the second-deepest lake in the world and the second most biodiverse, with 350 known fish species.

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Enviros Rejoice as Utility Drops Plan for Strip Mine in N.M.

After a bitter 20-year fight, enviros and members of the Zuni Pueblo tribe had cause to celebrate yesterday, when an Arizona utility abandoned plans to build a large coal strip mine and railroad near a salt lake in western New Mexico that the Native Americans hold sacred. Most members of New Mexico's congressional delegation wrote to federal regulators earlier this summer to express concern about the proposed project's effect on the lake; Gov. Bill Richardson (D) had likewise worried about the impact of the mine and welcomed yesterday's news. Zuni Pueblo council member Dan Simplicio said the coordinated effort to halt the mine raised cultural awareness among the Zuni people and nearby tribes: "The awakening we had for the past two years was really strong." But not everyone was happy about the news; some New Mexicans lamented the lost economic boost the mine would have brought to the state.

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The pristine environment around Lake Baikal in Siberia, the world's deepest freshwater lake, is endangered by a joint Russian-Chinese plan to build an oil pipeline through the region, Greenpeace warned yesterday. A month ago, Russian and Chinese oil companies signed a 25-year deal to pump 30 million tons of Russian crude oil to China every year, along a 1,500-mile-long route. Lake Baikal, which reaches a depth of more than a mile and contains one-fifth of the world's freshwater reserves, was declared a World Heritage Site in 1996 by the U.N.'s cultural agency, UNESCO; Greenpeace is now urging UNESCO to declare the site endangered. The environmental group has previously called on the Russian government to close down a number of environmentally hazardous factories along the lake's shores.

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Minnesota would become the first state in the U.S. to effectively ban phosphorus in automatic-dishwashing detergent if a bill working its way through the state legislature gets the eventual thumbs-up. Phosphorus, which helps to remove those oh-so-unsightly spots from glasses and dishware, ultimately gets flushed out of homes and into lakes and streams, where it contributes to algae blooms and clogged waterways. The bill now under consideration would make it illegal to sell detergents with a phosphorus content higher than 0.5 percent by weight; the current limit is 11 percent and most dishwasher detergents contain 6 to 8 percent phosphorus. No surprise that industry heavies such as Procter & Gamble are expected to make a big stink about the measure and mount a campaign to defeat it. In another trend-setting move, Minnesota last year began to clamp down on the use of phosphorus in lawn fertilizers.

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Invasive species are wreaking havoc on African wetlands to the tune of billions of dollars per year, according to a new study by the World Conservation Union (IUCN). For example, the water hyacinth, introduced from the Amazon Basin as an ornamental plant, has spread to most of Africa's lakes and rivers, choking out other flora and fauna, making fishing impossible, and restricting water supplies. Similarly, the IUCN says, the nonnative Nile perch has driven more than 200 native fish to extinction. Meanwhile, across the world, the Union of Concerned Scientists says that 122 harmful invasive species -- some of them from Africa -- have set upon Texas, threatening native species and agricultural lands.

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Invasive species are a problem throughout the world -- but in Japan, with its fragile island ecosystems, the problem is particularly severe. The most prominent Japanese battle to protect native species is raging in Lake Biwa, the nation's largest freshwater lake and a cultural icon frequently referenced in literature, theater, and film. There, voracious American fish, initially introduced for sport fishing, are out-competing their Japanese counterparts. Goats, mongooses, dandelions, beetles, raccoons, and other nonnative species are also wreaking havoc on Japan's environment. Ironically, in Japan as elsewhere, some of the now-problematic invaders were brought in to solve environmental problems. The mongoose, for example, was introduced to kill rats and the venomous habu snake; instead, it's found easier prey among native Japanese species and thrives in the tens of thousands. Until last year, Japan had no policy in place to address environmental problems stemming from nonnative species; now, the country is working to exterminate species that threaten its original ecosystems.

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Lakes and streams in New England have been slow to recover from the ill effects of acid rain, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. EPA. The regional reduction in acid rain lagged 10 percent behind the national rate of 40 percent in the 1990s; more worrisome, the number of "acidic systems" in New England fell by just 2 percent, whereas other areas of the country experienced dramatic improvements. (For example, the number of acidic lakes in the upper Midwest dropped by 68 percent, in the Adirondacks by 38 percent, and in the Northern Appalachians by 28 percent.) Scientists speculate that the soil in New England has lost its ability to neutralize acids and therefore the entire ecosystem will be slower to recuperate from the effects of years of acid rain. However, they hailed the report's findings of strong recoveries in other regions as evidence of the success of cutting back on the pollutants that cause acid rain.

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Banff National Park is the jewel of the Canadian Rockies -- and its most sparkly facet is Lake Louise, famous for emerald waters, dense forests, and glittering reflections of Victoria Glacier. But the peaceful-looking spot is actually a battleground between a large Canadian hotel chain and environmentalists who want to put a stop to a proposed $45 million, six-story addition to the already-giant Chateau Lake Louise hotel. The battle has raged for nearly a decade, with developers arguing that parks must provide the kind of services that will keep tourism a vital part of the national economy, and environmentalists countering that such development threatens the natural wonders the parks were designed to protect. With 5 million visitors every year -- and as many as 20,000 per day around Lake Louise -- Banff is already North America's most developed park. Enviros say the hotel expansion will place undue stress on the fragile lake region and its grizzly bears, lynx, wolverines, and other wildlife; they also see it as a symbolic battle for the soul of Canada's national parks.

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