Canada’s oil companies want permission to treat and release toxic waste from Alberta’s tar sands into the Athabasca River — the same river that flows into the drinking water supplies of First Nations communities. But many First Nations leaders say they’re already carrying an unbearable burden from the world’s fourth‑largest oil reserve, with health impacts that continue to mount.
The European Commission plans to rewrite the EU’s flagship water protection law to speed up the development of critical minerals mines, despite many being located in drying and water-stressed regions, Watershed’s analysis has found.
Mining is a water-intensive industry, requiring large volumes of water for ore processing, dust suppression, waste management and mine dewatering. While modern projects recycle water, they still require significant amounts, and in water-stressed regions those demands can add to pressure on already stretched rivers, aquifers and water supplies.
Analysis and mapping by Watershed Investigations, shared with the Guardian, found that more than half of the 33 planned new or expanded mines designated as “strategic projects” under the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act are located in areas that have been drying over the past two decades, according to Nasa satellite data.
It’s being called Canada’s “Brexit moment.” Alberta’s premier has announced that a referendum will be held in October, asking voters in the province whether they wish to remain part of Canada, or begin the legal process of pursuing separation. Leana Hosea reports from Alberta on the origins of the movement, its legal status and why the possibility of secession puts the rights of First Nations communities in jeopardy.
https://theworld.org/segments/2026/06/01/ballot-initiative-in-alberta-could-undermine-canadian-unity
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w1730c5l1sxt6rl
Rachel Salvidge
Who’s in charge? Is anyone driving this bus? I can’t shake the feeling that everyone thinks someone else is in control, while we freewheel towards catastrophe.
Not least because we’re entering a global era of ‘water bankruptcy’, according to the UN. Water-related violence is spiking. Most big cities now sit in high water stress regions. Large swathes of Europe are drying out. I’ve written about all this and mapped it on a new Water Security Atlas:
Back home, things aren’t much better. Taps ran dry at one end of the country last month, while at the other people did backstroke in their kitchens. On the very edges some people’s actual houses fell into the actual sea.
Ergo, someone’s not got a handle on water supplies, despite all the demand forecasts. Someone else can’t predict the floods that have been in climate projections for decades. And someone’s been studiously ignoring coastal erosion, despite it being as reliable as the tides.
Successive governments and regulators were supposed to make sure this rainy island has enough water to avoid shortages. They were supposed to prevent profiteering private interests from treating our rivers like open sewers. They were supposed to defend us from floods or at least help us get out of the way.
It doesn’t seem to be going so well.
I’ve examined the water supply situation and it appears regulators don’t have a clear grip on who’s using what. Worse still, they’ve known for years that many of England’s water companies aren’t doing enough to secure our drinking water into the future.
Smash cut to the people of Kent and Sussex: taps dry, blood boiling, swearing at water tankers in the streets.
These events were foretold and promptly foreignored, as I’ve set out in a number of articles. The most recent show that the Government, Environment Agency and Ofwat had warned South East Water about its supplies years before the recent outages.
And it’s not the only water company that has been warned about supply risks. Far from it:
Overall, management of water supplies looks iffy. I found this repeatedly while reporting a series of Guardian investigations — particularly because the system is so patchy and opaque that it’s difficult to determine who is using what, and therefore almost impossible to control the resource. Here’s what I found…
Moves are afoot, though. The government has laid a Water White Paper before Parliament, promising to do better. There is some good stuff in it but not enough about preventing pollution, and not enough about bringing the water sector properly into line.
The paper says the government is considering changes to how abstraction (taking water from the environment) is managed. That reform is critical if we’re ever to get a proper grip on supplies. But it’s also been promised for as long as I’ve been a journalist. Which is a long time.
So for now, we trundle on, driverless, towards the gorge. The only question is whether there will be any water at the bottom of it.
rachel.salvidge@watershedinvestigations.com
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Water-related violence has almost doubled since 2022 and little is being done to understand and address the trend and prevent new and escalating risks, experts have said. There were 419 incidents of water-related violence recorded in 2024, up from 235 in 2022, according to the Pacific Institute, a US-based thinktank. The institute has compiled evidence of hundreds of years of water-related conflicts, including cases of water being a trigger for violence, a weapon of conflict or a casualty of conflict
Watershed mapped the flashpoints: https://watershedinvestigations.com/find-out-whats-polluting-your-local-rivers-lakes-and-coast/
South East Water was warned of supply problems years before the taps ran dry, Watershed revealed. Regulators repeatedly told the company it did not have enough water to meet demand in two areas that lost supplies.
It was among many water companies that were warned by Defra, Ofwat and the Environment Agency about supplies and leakage. Watershed secured coverage in The Times, on ITV News and LBC, and on Yahoo News and local media.
Half the world’s 100 largest cities are experiencing high levels of water stress, with 38 of these sitting in regions of “extremely high water stress”, new analysis and mapping has shown.
Water stress means that water withdrawals for public water supply and industry are close to exceeding available supplies, often caused by poor management of water resources exacerbated by climate breakdown.
Watershed Investigations and the Guardian mapped cities on to stressed catchments revealing that Beijing, New York, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro and Delhi are among those facing extreme stress, while London, Bangkok and Jakarta are classed as being highly stressed.
Separate analysis of Nasa satellite data, compiled by scientists at University College London, shows which of the largest 100 cities have been drying or getting wetter over two decades with places such as Chennai, Tehran and Zhengzhou showing strong drying trends and Tokyo, Lagos and Kampala showing strong wetting trends. All 100 cities and their trends can be viewed on Watershed’s interactive water security atlas.
The UK’s largest proposed datacentre is understating the scale of its planned water use by a factor of 50, according to our analysis.
A first-of-its-kind analysis of the UK and Europe’s landfills has revealed that tens of thousands are located in flood-prone zones, areas used for drinking water, or in sensitive conservation sites. Watershed Investigations and Investigate Europe found that many of the 60,000 sites mapped are at risk of leaking toxic waste, posing threats to fragile ecosystems.
Check out where your nearest landfill site is on our map: https://watershedinvestigations.com/find-out-whats-polluting-your-local-rivers-lakes-and-coast/
Journalismfund.eu provided funding support for the investigation.
“I just kept smelling this horrible, nasty smell…like animal excrement and I was wondering what it was,” says Jess Brown, a young mum living in Fleetwood, Lancashire. Beyond the bad smells, we reveal the landfills which appear to be leaching toxic chemicals into the environment.
See our reports on UK landfills in the Guardian and ITV, and in France for Arte.
Check out where your nearest landfill site is on our Europe Landfills Map on the Maps page
Journalismfund.eu provided funding support for the investigation.